American AgriWomen Provide Resources for Mental Health

The American Agri-Women is the nation’s largest coalition of farm, ranch, and agribusiness women. Their mission is to communicate about agricultural issues and to promote the industry of agriculture.

Californian Jeanette Lombardo completed her term as President of the organization. The Ventura native spoke with California Ag Today about one a recent initiative to tackle mental health problems in agriculture.

Lombardo…”We started it as a pilot and due to the dairy consolidation we are seeing in the Wisconsin and Minnesota area, and we were able to secure some funding. So moving forward, we'll be able to expand that pilot out throughout the country. We have webinars that are available on our website for people to access free of charge. We have coffee chats that people can join and talk. We're looking at telemedicine. We have a number of ladies in our group that's working with the federal communications commission to help get that as a resource out of rural communities where there is not mental health professionals available for anyone to talk to. We're also doing mental first aid for people, bankers, insurance agencies that work with farmers. Did that for them to notice when there might be problems and to help, get them help.”

More details about this program. They call cultivating resiliency can be found on their website. www.AmericanAgriwomen.org.