Farm safety

Farming is one of Canada’s most dangerous occupations, governed almost entirely by voluntary workplace standards. Children living on farms face unique injury risks as they live and play in an environment often characterized by heavy equipment, huge vehicles and large animals. In addition, farming parents can frequently find themselves balancing the ongoing and unpredictable demands of farm work with the important task of supervising and caring for children. In fact, proper supervision is key to child safety in the farm environment.

According to the 2007 Canadian Agriculture Injury Report¹:
• A disproportionately high number of fatal injuries occur among children one to four years of age considering the percentage of the agricultural population that they represent.
• Almost two thirds (66.1%) of all fatal agricultural injury events among children and youth involve agricultural machines.
• Tractors are involved in almost half of the machine-related fatalities.
• Machine runovers and machine rollovers account for almost half of all agricultural deaths (48.6%) in children and youth one to 19 years of age. Drowning is a very important fatality mechanism for children from one to nine years of age, accounting for 35.6 per cent of the deaths in that age range.
• Among children and youth who died in agricultural related injury events, approximately 70 per cent were the children or other relatives of the owner/operator.
• Animal-related injuries rank first overall and first for the newborn to four years of age and 10 to 14 years of age categories.
• The most common mechanism for hospitalized injuries in children five to nine years of age is a fall from a height, usually from a barn loft. Youth aged 15-19 years of age are most frequently injured in machine entanglements and 20 per cent of these injuries result in permanently disabling amputations.

What works to prevent injury?

North American guidelines for Children’s Agricultural Tasks (NAGCAT)
The basis for these guidelines is to provide parents with a tool to evaluate their child’s abilities in relation to farm work activities. They assess the child from a physical and cognitive perspective as well as provide recommendations for supervision required and safety tips. Evidence surrounding the efficacy of the NAGCAT guidelines is promising. The guidelines appear to be accepted by members of the farm community and there seems to be substantial uptake of the guidelines among those who receive them, especially if the distribution effort is accompanied by additional information on child development principles.

Education/training programs

School-based programs/curriculum
The school-based programs that were evaluated appeared to be effective in increasing short-term knowledge acquisition.²

Safety day camps
Safety day camps showed positive results in terms of knowledge acquisition among enrolled children.³

Skills training
Tractor training programs produced inconsistent results and ATV safety training hasn’t yet been evaluated. However, there are some results from other skills training programs such as cycling to suggest that training received consistently and repeatedly has some positive effect.

Retrofitting machinery
Rollover protection systems (ROPS), guards, and automatic off switches are passive measures that can be highly effective.

Endnotes

¹ Canadian Agricultural Injury Surveillance Program. Fatal and hospitalized agricultural injuries among children and youth in Canada. 2007: Kingston.
² Pickett W, Hartling L, Crumley ET, Klassen TP, Brison RJ. A systematic review of prevention strategies for childhood farm injuries. Pediatrics. 2003;114(4):483-496.
³ Howard Research. Alberta safety day camp evaluation. 2003.

Published: Fri, May 28, 2010