This year’s record-breaking drought conditions have impacted the way farmers and ranchers operate in Colorado — there’s not enough water to go around, and costs are up everywhere. For many involved in agriculture, this is taking a toll on their mental health.
Programs like Colorado State University's AgrAbility program provide resources to help people deal with these challenges, whether that’s connecting farmers to therapy or training mental health providers to work with ag-specific issues.
Chad Reznicek is a behavioral health state specialist at CSU and the director of the program. He spoke with Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Caroline Llanes about what he’s seen this year.
Editor’s note: this transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Llanes: This year has been a doozy when it comes to things like drought and heat, which impact agriculture. Broadly, what have you observed in how these conditions are affecting the industry here in Colorado?
Reznicek: Yeah, absolutely. The impacts of this particular year, going back to the low snowpack, the droughts, the wildfires: the Western Slope's a great example of this because of the unique diversity of crops in agriculture out there in particular. When you have mild winters with very little precipitation, it impacts insects, it impacts diseases. There was a late freeze that further complicated things, and then you start throwing fires on that, the smoke impacts crop development. We've just seen a wide range of impacts across the board.
We have been asked to provide behavioral health resources and support to quite a few drought-serving organizations, including the Department of Agriculture, (CSU) Extension. So when there were drought workshops, everything from technical advice on how to make your irrigation more efficient, we would be asked to come along and just be able to share some of the behavioral health resources.
So we've been asked to walk alongside some of those more technical supports and efforts going back even to the early spring. And I think that's probably going to continue because as we get closer to winter, some of the real impacts of that are going to continue to make themselves known. We already know that the cost of hay is incredibly high. People are struggling with water, whether that's for irrigation or watering cattle. Pastures that they would normally use for later in the year are having to be used now because there's really no alternatives.
And so I think it's all just sort of this compounding issue around it, because it's just so much harder to make it this year because the natural resources that you tend to count on are so diminished this year, and then you add on top of that the fuel prices, fertilizer prices, everything going on with markets. So it's a unique year. I mean, agriculture's already one of those occupations that you're dealing with so many variables beyond your control. And this year, it's just like, ‘here's five or six more chainsaws for you to juggle in the mix.’
Llanes: Have you guys seen any increases in requests for your services this year?
Reznicek: For our ag voucher program that does free therapy for anyone involved in Colorado agriculture, we have — for this fiscal year, which ran from July 1st of 2025 through June 30th of 2026 — has been the highest rate of utilization on record that we've had, like significantly more than past years. During the last fiscal year, we provided 474 hours of therapy. The previous annual high we had was 331 hours, so 474 is a significant increase over that.
Some of that could be because we have some amazing partners promoting it, but I think it also sort of highlights that there's a need and people are trying to look at, ‘how can I learn to manage all these stressors without it impacting my family, my identity, my ability to feel comfortable in my own skin?’ And so I think that's a pretty big indication of a heightened level of stress and anxiety around what it means to be successful in navigating these challenges in ag.
Llanes: You mentioned earlier, you're not just providing direct services to people, you're also working with state agencies like the Colorado Department of Agriculture and partner organizations to get the word out. You've been at panels and events where farmers and ranchers go to get technical support for drought, and you've been involved with wildfire response as well. What does that kind of tell you about how people are viewing the mental health impacts of drought this year?
Reznicek: I think that it's positive in that it provides a natural opening to sort of expand people's awareness of, ‘yes, I need to figure out what to do with water. And I also need to figure out what to do so that I'm not awake at 2:00 in the morning with the hamster wheel of my mind turning over things I can't do anything to solve at 2:00 in the morning.’ You know, one of the things that I've been talking about is that I really don't like that term ‘unprecedented.’ We hear it all the time, but this is definitely an unprecedented year in terms of these challenges. And the one bit of comfort, or silver lining in that, is that if I'm facing an unprecedented situation, there is no expectation that I should be able to know how to figure that out and solve that on my own.
So if you're facing unprecedented water shortages, you have to be able to be willing to ask for help, to look at what are the options that you have available to you, even if it's something that you're not maybe comfortable with or familiar with or takes you out of your norm. And we have to do that across every range of need areas that we have, which is financial, it's emotional, it's social, it's spiritual, it's everything going on that impacts who we are as human beings. And particularly for our ag producers who, again, have so many moving parts right now, if you can zero in on those things you do have the ability to influence, to practice some agency and be able to impact, it just makes sense to highlight those items. And that's hard to figure out on our own, and it's hard to figure out on our own when we're sort of in crisis mode.
So to be able to really normalize and accept as a sign of courage that it's okay to ask for help, whatever that sort of help you may need at this particular moment is, there's people willing to try to navigate that. And if they don't know the answers, they're willing to reach out, find that, and allow people to get whatever sort of support that we can offer.
Llanes: As we've mentioned, these kinds of climate impacts tend to compound, as we saw with low snow pack this past winter. What are some of the things that you'll be keeping an eye out for this fall and winter as it relates to mental health and agriculture?
Reznicek: I think there's going to be the immediate push to get through harvest, to get through the sort of early fall period here. And then I think some of this is gonna start before then, because people are already out of water, they're out of feed, crop production is lower than usual, and so I think as the reckoning comes due, so to speak, with the financial impact of all this, then you're kind of left with the objective reality of what actually is the cost of this particular year. So I sort of suspect that around, I don't know, early November or so, the full cost of things will begin to sink in for people. I think some are already absolutely feeling it, so I don't mean to shortcut any of that. But I think that whatever we can do, come early winter and into those sort of colder months, to look at ‘how can we promote social connection? Once things maybe do start to slow down a little bit, how can we help them better strategize for the next year?’
You know, there's some level of optimism that maybe we're going to get a good snowpack this year and that next year is going to be better. And it's amazing how much just our water levels impact so many elements, so hopefully there's some optimism for the future. Regardless of that, it also, I think, highlights the need to really be strategic about, ‘what have we learned from this? How can we better sort of help prepare people? What are the services that are needed? What are the gaps that are existing?’ And I'm not smart enough to know what those gaps are myself, but I feel confident working with a number of these different organizations that we can collectively figure out, ‘what do we need to better do to position ourselves to support people as we get into this next year? What have we learned? What do we need to have on hand? And how can we continue to get better at providing the resources and support?’
Llanes: Chad, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with Rocky Mountain Community Radio.
Reznicek: Thank you.
Other mental health resources for the agriculture industry both in Colorado and the West include the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s resource page, the AgriStress Helpline (833-897-2474), FarmAid, and the LandLogic Model which provides training for mental and behavioral health providers.
Copyright 2026 Rocky Mountain Community Radio. This story was shared via Rocky Mountain Community Radio, a network of public media stations in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico, including Aspen Public Radio.
