SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – The state’s bicentennial, sesquicentennial and centennial farm families had been acknowledged, the new Illinois State Fair (ISF) queen introduced and 2025-2026 FFA and 4-H state leaders recognized when the tone of Illinois Agriculture Director Jerry Costello’s 2025 ISF Ag Breakfast address abruptly took on a more serious tone. During his Aug. 8 speech on Agriculture Day at the fair, Costello used his podium to urge farmers who are dealing with depression or stress about current farm prices or other issues to take advantage of the free mental health resources offered through the state’s Farm Family Resource Initiative (FFRI).

“It’s a help line for people to call who are having trouble or issues. From a physical standpoint, you can be 100 percent sound and healthy, but having mental issues. Unfortunately, in agriculture the amount of suicides we experience is multiples of normal occupations,” Costello said.

833-FARM-SOS is “100 percent confidential” to use, according to the Illinois Department of Agriculture (IDOA) director. “You can call, text or email FFRI and can get six free tele-health visits with a mental health professional that is completely confidential,” Costello said. “We all know that in small towns if your truck is parked at the doctor’s office, people at the coffee shop know it the next morning. I am telling you that this is completely confidential; call them from the tractor, from the side of the road, if you’re a spouse, a farm family member or a farm worker, please reach out.”

Farm bankruptcy filings are rising in 2025, a sign that agriculture is facing the same high financial pressures it saw prior to the COVID pandemic, according to Ryan Loy, Extension economist for the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture.

“We’ve had 259 filings in the United States between April 1 of 2024 and March 31 of this year,” Loy said in a recent article published by the Extension office. He added that the number of filings in the first quarter of 2025 outpaced those of the same period in 2024.

“We’ve already beat last year in terms of Q1 national filings. Once you see this on a national level, it’s a clear sign that financial pressures that we saw before in the 2018 and ‘19 are kind of re-emerging,” according to Loy.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago reported that district agricultural credit conditions weakened during the first quarter of 2025. Repayment rates for non-real-estate farm loans were much lower in the January through March period of 2025 compared with a year ago, and loan renewals and extensions were higher, according to the bank’s David Oppedahl and Elizabeth Kepner.

“In the first quarter of 2025, demand for non-real-estate farm loans relative to a year ago was up for the sixth consecutive quarter, while the availability of funds for agricultural lending relative to a year earlier was down for the eighth consecutive quarter,” University of Illinois Farm Policy News quoted Oppedahl and Kepner as saying. “At 61 (its lowest value since the first quarter of 2020), the index of repayment rates for non-real-estate farm loans was down from a year ago for the sixth consecutive quarter; 39 percent of responding bankers observed lower rates of repayment for the first quarter of 2025 relative to the first quarter of 2024, and no bankers observed higher rates.”

FFRI offers several tools to improve the health and wellbeing of Illinois farm owners and families, including a 24-7 helpline via phone, text or email, along with telehealth counseling, bereavement and grief support groups, access to the “Wellness in the Fields” podcast and farm succession seminars. The initiative is made possible through the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine Center for Rural Health, along with rural and agricultural partners.

During his Ag Day address, Costello praised Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and a bipartisan Illinois legislature for green-lighting $85.5 million in fairgrounds improvements that are highlighted with new signage placed around the upgraded structures and areas. “With the $55.3 million that was taken out of our IDOA budget (using) money from different places to put into these fairgrounds, over $140 million has been invested into the Illinois State Fairgrounds over the last 5.5 to 6 years,” Costello said.

He also acknowledged the heavy youth presence at the Ag Breakfast, where the Illinois 4-H Family Spirit Award was given to the Wendel Riggins family, of McDonough County, while corduroy-clad FFA leaders served heaping plates of eggs, biscuits and gravy, ham and potatoes to guests on the fairgrounds’ Director’s Lawn.

“In order to have the next generation to keep agriculture growing, we have to harvest the number one commodity that we have in this state, and that’s our kids,” Costello said. “Let’s make sure we put just as much time and effort as we can into our kids.”