A Call for Mental Health Support and Policy Reform for Rural Agrarian Communities in Wales. Author: Rhea Price

Agricultural land makes up ninety percent of Wales and forms the backbone of rural communities here. The scaring legacy of mine closure demonstrates how industry underpins community, and its loss substantially contributes to regional deprivation (Etherington, Gray, Buckner, 2025 p.16). We are again witnessing a fracturing of the social fabric in Wales, with almost three thousand agricultural business closures since 2017 and three hundred and ninety in the first half of 2025 alone (ONS, 2025, p.1). Forty three percent of those in the agriculture classification are Welsh speaking, more than any other professional sector (Thompson, 2022, p.2). By default, pressure to and loss of agrarian communities directly insights economic barriers and cultural degeneration onto Welsh speaking peoples.

‘The most commonly understood form of expert language is that of the professional’ (Snowden, 2011, p.4) as demonstrated in the use of explicit, specialised terminology in professional agriculture through the medium of Welsh. Linguistic systems in Welsh speaking agrarian communities, transmit placed based, ecological knowledge and ways of knowing intergenerationally. With the deterioration of oral culture wealth and language ‘humanity is losing […] a vast body of ancestral knowledge’ (Gómez-Baggethun, 2022, p.2 as cited in Adams, 2023, p.471). The Welsh word cynefin, provides a framework for understanding ones relationship, connection and belonging to community, land and place. It infers how collective history and culture continually shape the community inhabitants of that particular place.  With no direct English translation, the term illustrates how language facilitates relational epistemologies and  identity formation. Originating from Welsh hillside farming communities (Adams, 2023, p.470), the word and insights of previous generations of hill farmers in Wales ‘allow access to understandings that come from an older culture and lifetime of having an enhanced sense of relationship [or cynefin] with that land’ (Adams, 2023, p.483, brackets not included in original). Snowden (2011, p.3) highlights how a disconnect from cultural and environmental contexts as apposed to having a sense of cynefin can cause feelings of alienation, loss of relational identity and breakdown of community. Thus, the decline of Welsh farms poses significant threat to the transmission of decolonial perspectives, cultural inheritance, rural communities and in turn, the Welsh language itself.

What social or political processes have lead us to this point? Since Brexit, Welsh farming communities are struggling disproportionately to agricultural areas across the UK. Wales’s mountainous landscape and wet climate has led to the classification of much of its agricultural land as ‘less favourable areas.’ (Thompson, 2022, p.2). Pre-Brexit, these upland farms received financial subsidies through the Less Favoured Areas Scheme (LFAS), of which, produce poorer economic profits, surpassing areas with equivalent terrain elsewhere in western Great Britain (Henley, Morris, 2019, p.1). Heavily dependent on EU funding and without comparable replacements, since 2016, many of Wales’s hillside and small farms have been left exposed to collapse.

The precarities continue, with 2026’s proposed Inheritance Tax reforms, manifesting as severe cuts in tax relief for agricultural businesses. This change threatens less profitable, multigenerational family farms, forcing land sales and an erosion of rural continuity. For many, this bodes a deep insecurity for their future. Additionally, rural agrarian communities face a cluster of geographical and policy driven pressures threatening long term viability. Remoteness from centred populations continues to isolate farmers from essential services including mental health support networks. Alarmingly, the population of farmers under the age of forty five has declined from fourteen percent to under ten percent between 2010 -2017 (Henley, Morris, 2019, p.1), signalling a generational severing in land knowledge through Welsh mediums. Rising overheads, costs of machine maintenance, public liability insurance, and compliance with increasingly complex, top down environmental and regulatory frameworks are squeezing communities already fragile margins. While the adversities of climate change pose significant threat to farming across the UK, agricultural pollution policies like Wales’s blanket Nitrate Vulnerable Zones regulation, rigidly ignore seasonal conditions, local consultation and ecological variation, contributing to economic pressures and mental health strain for those in the industry. Together, these policies are decimating the cultural and linguistic fabric that has long sustained rural life in Wales.

The burdens of the current climate for agriculture are evident, with forty four percent of farmers between the ages of forty one to sixty working more than eighty one hours a week (Farm Safety Foundation 2024). Excessive labour to keep up revenue in the face of increased economic pressures and restrictive policies are decimating the wellbeing of agricultural workers. Ninety five percent of young farmers in the UK name mental health as the biggest hidden danger in the industry (Hansards, 2024, p.617). Policy neglect is driving this crisis in rural Wales, where exhaustion is routine and care scares. As a result, working in farming is seen as a significant risk factor for suicide, individuals being twice as likely to take their own life than the general population (House of Commons, 2023, p.25). Each death reflects the acute pressure on  communities, where safety and survival is threatened.

The Welsh government is failing to protect rural communities. Without change, the consequences are detrimental. The erosion of agriculture in Wales signals not only the decline of industry and economy, but a weakening of culture, language and a generations old sense of belonging and knowledge of the landscape. The concept of cynefin conveys the intertwining of identity, place and community and the importance of the survival of linguistic systems alternative to those which dominant industrial society.  Suicide is a tragedy to the individual, their families, friends and the wider community. As generational farms disappear, so do the livelihoods and people that sustain rural Welsh life. The growing mental health crisis reveals the damage of neglecting rural areas. It is vitally important Welsh Government starts to view protecting these communities as both a public health and cultural imperative. It is obligatory that rural specific, mental health support networks become implement within the industry. A more co-produced, context based approach to agricultural regulation is urgently needed. One that allows the mental health and cultural identity of rural communities to prosper, starting with policy that offsets the snowball of economic hardships post Brexit.

References

Adams, D. (2023) ‘Cynefin – Being of place. An investigation into the perspectives of first-language Welsh speaking hill farmers into the meaning of the word cynefin and the significance for education in Wales and beyond’ Journal of Outdoor and Environmental Education p.470, 471, 483, https://doi.org/10.1007/s42322-023-00144-2

Etherington, D. & Gray, M. & Buckner, L. (2025) ‘Still Digging Deeper: the impact of austerity on inequalities and deprivation in the coalfield areas’ Leeds: University of Leeds p.16, Coalfields Reportl DEMG.LB 10.03.25 Final (PG edit V2) (1).pdf

Farm Safety Foundation (2024) ‘Mind Your Head: Annual Tracker Research’ Durham: Yellow Wellies Mind Your Head – YellowWellies.org

Hansards (2024) ‘Mental Health: Farming and Agricultural Communities’ London: House of Commons, Volume 765, no.42, p.617 Commons-2024-11-11.p.pdf

Henley, A. & Morris, W. (2019) ‘Diversification and resilience of Welsh Farming: Prospects after Brexit’ Cardiff: Ymchwil Senedd | Senedd Research p.1, https://research.senedd.wales/research-articles/diversification-and-resilience-of-welsh-farming-prospects-after-brexit/

House of Commons (2023) ‘Rural Mental Health: fourth report of sessions 2022-23’ London: Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, Section 52, p.25, Rural Mental Health

Office for National Statistics (2025) ‘Business closures for Wales by broad industry group’ London p.1, Business closures for Wales by broad industry group – Office for National Statistics

Office for National Statistics (2017) ‘Suicide by occupation, England 2011 to 2015’ London p.8, Suicide by occupation, England: 2011 to 2015

Snowden, D. (2011) ‘Cynefin, A sense of Time and Place: an ecological approach to sense making and learning in formal and informal communities’ Research Gate p.4, Cynefin_A_Sense_of_Time_and_Place_an_Ecological_Ap.pdf

Thompson, H. (2022) ‘Our Land: Communities and Land Use’ Cardiff: Institute of Welsh Affairs Report, p.2, IWA_Our-Land-Communities-and-land-use_v5.pdf