Brent Cunningham

1 month ago | thefern.org | Brent Cunningham

By Brent CunninghamU.S. farmers die by suicide at three and a half times the national rate. Their jobs are difficult, dangerous, and precarious, at the mercy of increasingly volatile weather and the whims of markets and politics. Addressing the problem of mental health in farm country has proven difficult, in part because many farmers are loath to acknowledge it, wary of the stigma and tied to a culture of quiet coping.

1 month ago | thefern.org | Brent Cunningham

“Kaila Anderson stands in front of some photos in the farmhouse where she grew up, near the tiny town of Sabetha, in the northeast corner of Kansas. Outside, frozen February fields of wheat, hay and corn stubble repeat across the rolling hills. This agrarian landscape inspired a breakthrough she made four years ago that now promises to help farmers struggling with their mental health,” writes Dean Kuipers.

1 month ago | thefern.org | Brent Cunningham

“For much of the past two decades, soda was … suffering a bit of a reputation problem. This is because soda is really not good for you: It generally contains a ton of sugar and no vitamins, and also the bubbles are bad for your teeth. So it was shunned, taxed, and villainized, likened to cigarettes and made a synecdoche for America’s broken food system, in which empty calories are easier and cheaper to obtain than nutritionally dense foods,” writes Ellen Cushing.

1 month ago | thefern.org | Brent Cunningham

“The Burren is one of the most recent projects of the Irish Pub Company, a Dublin-based design group that has created upwards of 2,000 pubs in more than 100 countries on every continent except Antarctica,” writes Liza Weisstuch. “Germany is its biggest European client, and Switzerland is a close second. In Russia, it has established three venues in Moscow, one in Sochi and one in Novosibirsk, in Siberia.

1 month ago | thefern.org | Brent Cunningham

“Remy went home and cut together a montage of his footage from inside JBS and around Greeley and recorded a voiceover with the information from Ebah. This isn’t a job for lazy people, he says in Creole. But you don’t need to know English. And, if they came, Remy told his followers, he knew places they could stay. ‘Those apartment is pretty close from the job,’ he told me later, translating the voiceover. So if you’re interested?