"How lonely are you?" The role of social contacts and farm characteristics in farmers' self-reported feelings of loneliness, and why it matters

Abstract

Loneliness and social isolation among farmers are growing public health concerns. The contributing factors are manifold, and some of them are linked to structural change in agriculture, for instance because of higher workloads, rural depopulation, or reduced opportunities for collaboration. Our work explores the interconnections between loneliness, social contacts, and structural factors in agriculture based on a survey of 110 farm managers in the mountain region of Entlebuch, Switzerland combined with agricultural census data. We use path analysis, in which loneliness is the main outcome, and social contacts are an explanatory and explained variable. We find that 3% of respondents report that they feel lonely frequently or very frequently, and the rest sometimes (20%), rarely (40%) or never (38%). Managers with higher workloads report feeling lonely more frequently, and this relationship is direct, as well as indirect because of less frequent social contacts. However, physical isolation is not a significant predictor of loneliness. Moreover, short food supply chains correlate with less frequent loneliness feelings. Our study sheds light on the effects that structural change can have on the social fabric of rural areas.