Huck Heintz has spent a busy year providing free financial consulting to dairy farmers in upstate New York.

With milk selling for less than it cost to produce this year, a lot more dairy farmers turned to NY FarmNet, the Ithaca-based not-for-profit agency that employs Heintz. Others called agricultural help lines with their personal and professional woes.

"When you can't pay the bills and you have to borrow money and you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, there's a lot of emotional stress," said Patty Beyer, a partner with Moserdale Dairy in Copenhagen, N.Y. They milk 350 cows and have sought help from FarmNet in the past. "There's a whole bunch of other things that go with it aside from just milking the cows."

NY FarmNet saw a 50 percent increase in help requests over the past year. A group helping Midwest farmers said it expects to end the year with an increase of up to 17 percent.

The demand reflects the dire financial straits many dairy farmers are in this year. Many say their lines of credit are tapped or they can no longer afford monthly payments for equipment bought when milk prices were higher. Their debt problems have been made worse by the falling value of cattle as farmers sold to slaughter herds they couldn't afford to feed.

Many dairy farmers had increased production in good times to meet growing export demand. When that demand dried up with the global recession, they were left with too much milk on their hands and prices collapsed.

It was not unusual earlier this year for farmers to sell milk for three-quarters of the price it cost to produce. FarmNet Executive Director Ed Staehr said many dairy farmers in New York lost about $1,000 for every cow over the last year.

FarmNet, which is funded primarily by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets but also relies on other public and private grants and sponsorships, serves any type of farmer and others in agriculture. Callers can talk to one of 50 consultants who specialize in either financial or personal problems. It has taken about 6,000 requests for help this year.

Requests also were up at Sowing the Seeds of Hope, a behavioral health network covering Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. There are typically about 23,000 calls a year made to help lines in the seven states, but administrators expect to handle up to 27,000 calls by the end of this year, said Michael Rosmann, executive director of Iowa-based AgriWellness Inc., which administers the network.