E X E CU T I V E S UMMA R Y
Purpose of the Guide. To strengthen the ability of Extension professionals to reduce risk and stressors and increase the resilience of farms and farming families within the context of a socioecological framework. The guide was created to help professionals think and act through a research-based, theory- informed, multidisciplinary approach to addressing problems and issues, and creating solutions. Need for the Guide. As two seasoned professionals who have worked for Extension through at least two other eras of the farm crisis, we believed that stress management was a necessary but insufficient approach for Extension and partners. Our training and programming experiences pointed to the need for additional approaches that addressed underlying problems as well as symptoms of those problems, not just from an individual perspective but from multiple perspectives. We believed that a socio-ecological approach would not only teach individuals how to prevent and manage stress but look at the role of families, the community, and public policies in positioning the farm and family to be resilient, and at times to engage in the public policy arena. And the approach would be research-based and theoretically sound, resulting in a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to farm and farm family health and well-being. The 2020 edition of this guide was created to provide a framework for programming that not only informs but moves individuals, families, professionals, and public policymakers to take action to prevent or mitigate sources of stress (Braun & Pippidis, 2020). The need for the original guide grew out of several Extension and research projects, including the USDA-AFRI study, Health Insurance, Rural Economic Development and Agriculture , the Extension Smart Choice-Smart Use Health Insurance program, and a request from the University of Maryland College of Agriculture and Natural Resources to explain why suicide is so prevalent among farmers. These projects, involving the authors, were underway at a time when the health and well-being of farms and farm families were becoming headlines in the media and topics of angst for Extension and other professionals providing education and services for the farming population. The impact of stressors on people and farm enterprises, sometimes resulting in suicides, was pushing Extension, health, and finance professionals to address stress on farms more directly. What’s New? This 2021 eFieldbook version of the guide is a product of a grant from the Connect Extension Foundation’s New Technology in Agriculture Education awarded to the University of Delaware Cooperative Extension. Under the tutelage of the team of advisors to the project, we updated the first edition and converted it to an eFieldbook. This version includes new sections on the impacts of COVID-19 on the farming enterprise and farming population, minority and women farmers, and community resilience. It also includes 50 new references and multiple audio and video recordings that provide testament to the literature and/or explain a concept in depth. Literature Review. Our search for such an approach to undergird Extension stress-related programming led us to examine risk management in use by the agricultural field and of resilience used in agriculture, community development, and health, including mental and financial health and well-being and human development and family science. Our literature review examined seminal writings and research
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