• A bipartisan pair of House lawmakers say mental health funding for a program aiding Michigan’s farmers must be restored
• Funding for the farmer suicide prevention program was cut earlier this year as part of October’s $81 billion state budget agreement
• The letter comes after a Bridge Michigan report which found the farming profession has one of the highest rates of suicide in the state 

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LANSING — A bipartisan pair of state lawmakers are pushing to restore mental health funding for farmers, citing Bridge Michigan reporting on the profession’s unusually high suicide rate. 

Farmer suicides have been a national crisis since at least the 1980s, with agricultural workers having one of the highest rates of suicide among all occupations.

But an effort to address the crisis in Michigan, where farmers are five times more likely to commit suicide than the overall state rate, was defunded as part of the $81 billion state budget agreement this past October. 

Now, state Reps. Matt Beirlein, R-Vassar, and Jasper Martus, D-Flushing, are urging House and Senate leaders to restore funding for the farmer suicide prevention program in a future supplemental spending bill.

“Thanks to reporting from Bridge Michigan and conversations our legislative offices in Lansing have had, we know many Michigan farmers do not have insurance plans that cover mental health care and some have no insurance at all,” Beirlein said in a Friday statement.

“Without funding for this program, they are forced to pay hundreds of dollars out of their own pockets for therapy as they try to get by, or they simply opt not to receive care they desperately need. We need to look at this as lifesaving medical treatment, because that’s what it is.”

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Michigan farms employ 98,000 workers, according to state data, and have a direct economic impact of over $74 billion annually. 

In Michigan, 11 people working in farming, forestry and fishing died by suicide in 2023, the most recent year for which statewide data is available. Those involved in the collection of the data told Bridge that most deaths in that category each year are farm workers.

That’s a suicide rate of 84.5 per 100,000 workers, compared to an overall Michigan rate of 14.9. Farmer suicide rate was second in 2023 only to material moving workers, at 89 deaths per 100,000 workers.

Farmers were able to seek free mental health counseling through a Michigan State University Extension program known as Legacy of the Land until this past September. The program had paid for 550 therapy visits and reached over 10,000 people across Michigan through educational presentations and workshops since 2020.

Those same visits now cost roughly $150 an hour for farmers after lawmakers opted not to renew program funding earlier this year.

In the 2024-25 fiscal year, Legacy of the Land had received just $112,000 from the state, plus another $90,000 in federal grant funding. Both sources of funding have since lapsed.

“Culturally, we seem to understand now that mental health is as important as physical health, but our public policy needs to catch up… I am committed to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to ensure that farmers have access to the care they need and can do their important work,” Martus, D-Flushing, said in a statement.

“Too often, people feel left behind. Farmers should know that we have their backs.”

Beirlein and Martus formally submitted their funding request in a Friday letter to House Appropriations Committee Chair Ann Bollin, a Brighton Republican, and Senate Appropriations Chair Sarah Anthony, a Lansing Democrat.

Remington Rice, extension educator and director of the Managing Farm Stress program for the MSU Extension, said he’s been overwhelmed by the response since Bridge first reported on the funding cut earlier this month. 

When made aware of Martus and Bierlein’s letter, Rice said he cried “tears of joy,” as it meant possible “progress in the right direction” for the communities and people he served.

“This is well beyond my expertise, so I don’t know if it’s likely, I’ll just say I hope” funding will be restored for the program, Rice added.

It’s not immediately clear if the full Legislature will agree to restore the funding. Anthony did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Bollin told Bridge she was familiar with the farmer suicide prevention funding in question and would “obviously take that into consideration.” But she made “no commitment” to restore the funding in a future supplemental spending bill, which she said likely will not be proposed until early 2026. 

The Republican-led House and the Democratic-led Senate are currently at odds over a separate spending dispute after the House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday unilaterally cancelled nearly $650 million in previously approved funding for various programs. 

Among those cuts were $6.7 million for Flint water crisis recovery, $56,600 to provide wigs to Michiganders undergoing cancer treatment and $18.5 million for a first-in-the-nation cash program that aids new and expecting mothers, RxKids.

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