How a simple CDC error inflated the farmer suicide crisis story—and led to a rash of inaccurate reporting

The CDC study, which the authors wrote was “not nationally representative,” attempted to calculate suicide rates by occupational group across 17 states. The researchers used a national reporting system to access suicide records from 2012 and associated them with occupational categories determined by the federal government. They also used estimates for the total number of workers in each occupational category from a federal survey. With these two figures, they computed suicide rates by occupational group.

Under the federal occupational guidelines, farmers are classified as having a “management occupation,” not a “farming, fishing, and forestry occupation.” Yet it was the farming, fishing, and forestry, or “Triple-F,” occupational group that had the highest suicide rate in the country: 84.5 per 100,000 people, over 4 times the overall average of 20.3 among people in the workforce. The suicide rate among managers, in contrast, was exactly average.

The Triple-F category is made up of, as the name suggests, workers in agriculture, commercial fishing, hunting, and forestry. The emphasis is on “workers.” Managers, business owners, administrators, advisors, and other white-collar or entrepreneurial positions within these industries are generally categorized separately. Almost no reporters noticed that the definition of Triple-F workers does not include farmers: agricultural workers constitute almost 90 percent of the group. These laborers tend to engage in repetitive manual tasks like planting, picking, and packing crops. They make little money—their median household income is between $20,000 and $25,000 a year, according to the latest National Agricultural Workers Survey—and are 80 percent Hispanic. They are often employed by farmers, whose median family income is around $79,000.

When we first asked the authors, in April, how farmers were categorized, the corresponding author responded that “farmers who were managers [were categorized as managers].” After we asked them in early May to clarify whether any farmers were purposefully categorized in the Triple-F category, the corresponding author told us that they needed to review “the programming and data files and [would] get back in touch [soon].” We asked again on June 18, but they did not respond prior to publication.

We became convinced that one of two hypothetical situations was true: 1) CDC had correctly classified suicides in the Triple-F category, or 2) CDC had incorrectly classified farmer suicides with Triple-F suicides. If 1) were true, then CDC’s study found that a group made up almost entirely of agricultural workers had the highest suicide rate in the country. If 2) were true, then we could not make conclusions about the respective suicide rates of Triple-F workers and farmers. But we did notice, when we attempted to reproduce the study’s results, that the researchers appeared to have divided by Triple-F workers only. Had they divided by farmers as well, they would have halved the reported rate, which would have dropped it to third in the study. The CDC may also have not divided by enough agricultural workers: Philip Martin, an emeritus professor at the University of California, Davis, says the survey CDC relied on undercounts them by half. With those workers included, the reported rate would have fallen to fifth or sixth. So, if CDC did lump farmer suicides in with Triple-F suicides, then the researchers should have reported a rate no higher than third in the study, and as low as sixth, rather than the highest.

On the other hand, if farmer suicides were not grouped together with Triple-F ones, then the suicide rate for Triple-F workers should have been about 50 per 100,000 people—and ranked second or third highest—after taking Martin’s correction into account.

Even without our level of analysis, news outlets should have been skeptical. Had they assumed workers were categorized correctly, they should have concluded that agricultural workers, not farmers, have the highest suicide rate in the country. Had they suspected farmers and agricultural workers were in the same category, they should have concluded that CDC provided no definitive findings for either.

Reporters could have also turned to research on agricultural workers, which, while incomplete, suggests they tend to suffer from extraordinarily high rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation (there is no research on their suicide rates throughout the United States). But instead, media outlets ran stories on the “farmer suicide crisis,” a narrative repeated by politicians as they began to work on the farm bill.