Farm Safety Week draws attention to one of the most dangerous occupations
EDMONTON – March 12 through the 18 is Canadian Agriculture Farm Safety Week and it comes with some startling statistics.
Farming is the fourth most dangerous occupation in terms of fatal injuries.
Don Voaklander, director of the Injury Prevention Centre at the University of Alberta, is urging farmers to think differently about operational safety by shedding old on-the-job habits that may not be safe.
Approaching daily work with a shift in thinking could go a long way to preventing unnecessary injury on the family farm, said Voaklander, noting that a recent Farm Credit Canada poll showed that 80 per cent of farmers felt their biggest barrier to on-the-job safety was simply sticking to old habits.
“Old habits are often poor habits,” said Voaklander, who has tracked farm safety for 20 years. “It’s wise to have that double-think before you do something that you’ve done 10 times before, but that is actually quite dangerous. Are there some safety measures that should be in place first?”
In Canada, an average of 101 people dying in agriculture-related accidents every year, according to data from Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting and researched by the U of A’s Injury Prevention Centre. In addition, farmers are five times more likely to die through work-related accidents than any other industry. And, said Voaklander, the child fatality rate on Alberta farms is slowly climbing over the years–going against the national trend. Between 1990 and 2013, children fatalities rose from about eight per 100,000 farm children to about 15 per 100,000.