ON MENTAL WELL-BEING IN RURAL AND FARMING COMMUNITIES

Debbie Weingarten

"What happens when somebody is separated from something that they love to their bones like land? How do you measure that?"

Journalist and former vegetable farmer Debbie Weingarten talks with Sarah about the dark side of rural existence for people watching their family’s way of life be turned upside down—and how a society that relies on their labor can begin to value farmers.

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From: Cincinnati, Ohio

Current home: Tucson, Arizona

Debbie Weingarten is a writer and fellow with Community Change. A former vegetable farmer, she now works with the Female Farmer Project to document the rise of women in agriculture. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Guernica, The Guardian, Economic Hardship Reporting Project, Longreads, and Vela, among many other outlets, including the Best of Food Writing 2016 and 2017 anthologies. She was a 2019 James Beard Award nominee for her story exposing discrimination against Louisiana’s Black sugar cane farmers.