On-Farm Safety Program

Abstract

Rates of fatal occupational injuries in New York agriculture far outstrip the average for all American workers. Among its various approaches to this problem, the New York Center for Agricultural Medicine and Health (NYCAMH) sponsored an On-Farm Safety Program that sought to reduce farm worksite hazards and to enhance understanding of safe farm practices through a two-step process. First, an on-farm hazard survey identified hazards that may lead to farm injury and suggested improvements to correct those hazards. Second, on-farm safety training sessions were offered to increase safety knowledge and influence adoption of safe work practices. Over a 2-year period, 124 farms were surveyed and 187 safety training sessions were conducted on a total of 271 New York farms. Follow-up phone surveys were conducted with 97 (78%) of the on-farm survey sites at roughly 6 months. Of the 97 survey farms that completed the telephone survey, 77 (79%) reported having made safety improvements. Hazards resolved tended to be less labor intensive and expensive than some of the other hazards observed. Ninety-six (99%) of the farms that completed the telephone follow-up survey found the on-farm visits useful and said that NYCAMH should continue to offer the On-Farm Safety Program. No data were collected to assess the impact of these efforts upon occupational injury and illness. This appears to be an effective means of outreach to heighten safety awareness of the farm population and to address some of the observed worksite hazards. It is unclear whether this approach substantially impacts the elevated risk of injury in agriculture.

Safe Farmer Common Sense’ - A National Five-Year Education-Based Program for Prevention of Occupational Injuries in Swedish Agriculture-Background, Process, and Evaluation

“…On-farm education programs have been reported previously to be a successful way to motivate farmers to improve farm safety, with a high frequency of farmers reporting having made safety improvements. 37 However, comparing the farmers who participated in the program in 2010 with those who participated in 2012 revealed that the latter were less active in their farm safety work, which may indicate that the most motivated farmers participated in the program first (Table 1).…”

Safety and Health Hazard Observations in Hmong Farming Operations

“…15–17 One approach that has been used in some studies is a checklist based on walkthroughs through work areas with dynamic operations, such as agricultural 18,19 and construction 20,21 sites. This approach shows promise in identifying the presence and degree of a range of hazards, but requires further evaluation before it can be widely adopted, particularly in agricultural work, which involves a wide range of crop- and process-specific tasks and equipment.…”