Addressing mental health in the supply chain: are companies doing enough?

Last year, I spent time in South Africa researching for a feature on township culture. Part of my travels involved interviewing local farmers and traders about the troubles they had setting up their own micro-businesses. Rural poverty, alcoholism and abusive relationships had all fractured their livelihoods and climate change and debt or lack of financial support from the government had destroyed their crops.

Those I spoke to were caught in a vicious circle. Some of their problems were on a small scale though and, to some extent, a microcosm of those faced by farmers in other countries: women working in Jamaica's sugarcane production have often turned to prostitution or drug trafficking to escape their debt worries and farmers in China, Ghana and India have commited suicide, as documented by a Christian Aid report back in 2005.

The report blamed free trade policies for the high level of suicides. It said that support networks for farmers had been scaled down in recent years. As a result, farmers' mental wellbeing was being affected, they weren't coping with the financial pressures of rural poverty and some were deciding to take their own lives.

"It is not just income and food that the farmers we work with are needing," explains Richie Alford, head of research and impact at the charity Send a Cow, a member of the African Smallholder Farmers Group. "They often have few skills and resources and lack the self-confidence and belief to affect change, and have no vision of what a better future can be."

Alford believes that making the journey out of poverty, and tackling mental health problems, can start to be achieved by farmers "working in community groups", where "they can share their burdens, discuss ideas, set their goals and offer one another the vital support" they need to cope during inevitably difficult times. Charities such as Send a Cow can help provide group-level training to strengthen farming communities and give the farmers the skills they need to build a successful business, such as introducing them to sustainable agriculture techniques.

According to Alford, such education and support, as well as a strong community spirit, can help boost morale and increase production. He says that "as families start to produce more, their confidence is reinforced and their hopes raised – and realised", reducing the likely onset of mental health problems.

Beyond charities providing support, the onus is also on multinational companies to make their supply chains more accessible to smallholders, so they can bring their produce to market and grow their businesses. Fairtrade encourages such initiatives.

The consequences of companies failing to take these measures, or to understand the support needs of workers low down in supply chains, can be fatal. In India, thousands of cotton farmers have taken their own lives. Less well known is that in Ghana, cocoa and tomato farmers have also been known to turn to suicide. Suicide isn't just restricted to the agricultural industry either; the electronics industry has been plagued with incidents such as that at Foxconn.

In the case of the cotton farmers, companies such as Monsanto have been blamed for putting profit over people, for their commitment to GM seeds and for failing to introduce safeguards for the use of pesticides, which farmers have been known to swallow to kill themselves.

There are numerous reports and studies into suicide, such as the Million Death Study in India. Such data collated is designed to help governments and charitable organisations draw up measures for preventing further suicides.

But there is a disconnection between suicide and mental health. Many organisations – even some of those who may have released reports on suicide – fail to monitor mental health.

In response to an interview request, the International Fund for Agricultural Development said it might not be able to find a suitable respondent because answers "wouldn't really be scientific or fact-based given that we do not measure farmers' mental health". Nor is there any mention of mental health in Oxfam's Behind the Brands report on supply chain issues.

Even though this lack of data and research can hinder companies' awareness of mental health problems, there is still much they could be doing to make their supply chains more accessible to those at the bottom. For instance, they could be ensuring mental health is regulated as part of audits.

Sedex's guidelines for auditors, which cover agricultural sites, don't require workers' mental health to be monitored as part of regulations – there is no mention of mental health or suicide in their Best Practice Guidelines. This is despite the fact that their guidelines appear to be in accordance with the International Labor Organisation's (ILO) Occupational Health and Safety convention no 155, that covers "mental elements affecting health which are directly related to safety and hygiene at work" under its definition of health.

Sedex were asked to comment on the matter, but didn't respond.

As the ILO states in a separate report, the inclusion of mental health in workplace policies should also include "an assessment of the mental health of the organisation itself"; an indication that companies are often unaware of the pressure their supply chain workers are under.

There is some progress being made on this front, but it often takes fatal incidents to occur for action to be taken. Following a series of audits, Apple workers at Foxconn's Shenzhen factory in China now have access to psychological counselling, including a 24-hour hotline. And employee assistance programmes, designed by mental health experts, have been introduced at three other factories.

Smallholder farms can be harder to audit. According to an interview given by Jon Pitoniak, a programme manager at Verité – a fair labour organisation that works to ensure supply chain workers are working under fair and legal conditions – the process of auditing an agricultural site is "significantly different from going into a manufacturing facility", as there is less mechanisation.

Pitoniak adds that it's important that both auditors and companies learn about the working context of smallholder farmers, so they "are better able to make sense of the situation and complexities inherent to the smallholder environment" – namely the intertwining complexities of the vicious circle of poverty that smallholder farmers will often find themselves trapped in.

By monitoring mental health as part of audit regulations, companies invested in the agricultural industry can learn how issues such as rural poverty can impact on mental wellbeing.

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