Climate grief is personal to Maud Powell, associate professor and small farm advisor with Oregon State University. She and her husband vowed they’d never leave the land they loved and farmed for decades in Applegate Valley in southern Oregon. During the hot summers they survived using innovative water-saving techniques she shared with other farmers, like planting hedgerows and storing winter rainwater.
But one summer their creek ran dry. A few summers later in 2021 temperatures soared above 117 degrees for three straight weeks.
“My husband and I were in triage mode,” Powell recalled. “We knew we had to move, and it was the biggest gut punch. We raised our kids here. My husband always said he’d be buried here.”
Faced with these emotions, Powell sought help for anxiety and grief, and soon realized she was not alone.
“So many farmers are experiencing similar loss,” Powell said. “Very little is being done to address the mental and emotional strain famers are under due to climate change.”
So, Powell choose to help. She and her team recently received a $100,000 SARE grant to support climate-stress resiliency among agricultural producers and professionals in the West. The three-year project will build on a successful pilot program her team developed in 2023.
A different kind of grief
Climate grief is unique because the loss is ongoing. “It’s not necessarily tied to one event,” Powell said. “You see the ongoing effects of climate change – plants dying, wild animals scrambling for water – and it can be overwhelming and paralyzing. It’s easy to want to distract yourself from the feelings.”
Powell said farmers are experiencing a complex web of emotions, from sadness and terror to rage and guilt. “People tell us, ‘Maybe I’m not doing enough.’”
The team is producing a 90-minute program that will help people unpack those feelings and more. The program will be used at conferences, offered online and become the basis of discussion groups on climate stress.
“It’s important to give grief a name; to normalize what people are feeling,” Powell said. “We can do more than offer new irrigation technology. We can help people understand that grief is a completely appropriate response to climate change.”
Powell said it’s helpful when people can name something specific, like “My father and I would hunt for crawdads in the lakes, but now the crawdads are gone,” or “The forest near our home burned down.” She also encourages people to share what works for them, whether that’s feeding their pollinators or going to the gym.
“It’s about building community and having a safe place where you can acknowledge, name, feel and share your feelings,” Powell said. “When people can share vulnerable emotions, they feel less alone.”
Last winter, the Powells finally found a new place to live, this one a bit further north in Oregon with more water and less acreage to manage.
“We love it. It was heart-breaking to sell our old place, but this shows me we can adapt. These are intense times, and we’ll get through them when we work together.”
View Related SARE Grant:
- Climate Stress & Grief: Building Awareness and Resilience Strategies for Ag Professionals & Producers in the West (WPDP24-022)