Burnout in Swiss Agriculture before the Context of Finance, Health and Interconnection of Family and Farm

Burnout among farmers is an increasingly frequent topic of discussion in the Swiss agricultural press, although there have been no empirical studies on the phenomenon to date. In 2016, 4000 Swiss Farmers were invited to... [ view full abstract ]

Burnout among farmers is an increasingly frequent topic of discussion in the Swiss agricultural press, although there have been no empirical studies on the phenomenon to date. In 2016, 4000 Swiss Farmers were invited to complete a questionnaire, 1352 usable questionnaires were returned. The aim of which was to investigate the frequency and causes of burnout in the Swiss farming sector. The study shows that burnout affects around 12% of the surveyed farmers. Influencing factors were analysed by applying a multivariate regression analysis. The study is the first to deliver data on the frequency of burnout in farming, and at the same time highlights the need for action – especially the need to recognise burnout at a sufficiently early stage. In conclusion, the predictors of burnout among Swiss farmers appeared to be a bad financial situation, time pressure and lack of free time, work-family-conflict, bad health and bad life satisfaction. The consideration of predicting factors both from private and from professional life succeeds in explaining a really large share of the variance. This shows the multifaceted causes of burnout. It could be confirmed that both the prevalence of relational conflicts, a bad financial situation and a high workload that exerts pressure and prevents breaks remain core predictors of burnout.