(LifeSiteNews) – According to a July study from the University of Guelph, the mental health of Canadian farmers has plummeted since the onset of the COVID-19 so-called pandemic, with one in four farmers reporting that they have either contemplated suicide, felt that “their life was not worth living,” or “wished they were dead” within the last year.
The study – funded by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and led by the Ontario Veterinary College – found that in addition to the 25 percent of farmers who have felt suicidal, 83 percent reported much lower levels of mental endurance and increased levels of job burnout when compared to the generational population.
In total, 76 percent of farmers reported higher levels of stress than the norm.
The study – which was overseen by Dr. Andria Jones-Bitton – was conducted in the spring of 2021 and surveyed 1,200 farmers nationwide.
According to Jones-Bitton, Canadian farmers’ mental health is a “very troubling situation.”
“We have made great strides in reduction of stigma and in increasing of help seeking, which is good news,” Jones-Bitton noted. “And yet, we’re still seeing these troubling statistics and the stressors that farmers are experiencing.”
To deal with stress, farmers reported that they had resorted to drinking more alcohol, eating less and sleeping more than normal.
Those who said their drinking had picked up said it occurred more noticeably during the COVID crisis, which corresponds to a 2021 report by Statistics Canada that found that lockdowns likely played a role in the massive uptick in alcohol and drug-related deaths that have been sweeping the nation.
Beyond the devastating impact of lockdowns, since elected prime minister in 2015, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government has enacted numerous policies that have impacted farmers more directly than the rest of Canadians.
Most notably, Trudeau’s Liberals have continued to impose sanctions on firearm ownership despite farmers insisting guns are a necessity for the protection of their livestock and the continuation of their livelihoods.
In addition to the threat of firearm confiscation, farmers have also become the target of the “climate change” agenda, with the way they produce crops coming under scrutiny from climate alarmists.
In accordance with the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda and the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset” agenda, Trudeau has pushed a radical environmental agenda, most recently by backing nitrogen-rich fertilizer reduction policies similar to those that caused food shortages and social unrest in Sri Lanka and the Netherlands.
As reported last month by LifeSiteNews, two Canadian farming industry groups have warned that Trudeau’s goal of cutting fertilizer use by 30 percent would cause food production costs to skyrocket and would dramatically impact the profitability of farming by reducing crop yields.
All of this action has been taken despite credible evidence, such as a June 2017 peer-reviewed study by two scientists and a veteran statistician, confirming that most of the recent “global warming” data have been “fabricated by climate scientists to make it look more frightening.”