ANOTHER STUDY: Farming is no safer for children than it was 25 years ago

Two recent studies argue that farms are not getting safer for children. If anything, they’re getting more dangerous.
A study covering more than 25 years of data, from 1990 to 2015, found the fatality rate for children barely changed. It nudged upward from 7.1 per 100,000 in 1990 to 7.4 per 100,000 in 2015, according to the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association.
Of child fatalities on the farm, the most common group are the very youngest children, under aged 5. Most were killed by machinery, particularly involving tractors. From 2006 to 2016, 44 per cent of children killed in farm accidents died in a runover or a rollover.
The report, in its recommendations for action, was clear that education-based efforts to reduce farm fatalities in children have failed. Although it recommended further dissemination and use of the Ag Youth Work Guidelines on family farms, it also called for better access to childcare, the use of physical barriers to keep children away from work, and formal safety and supervision training for families.
Those recommendations echo a second study to be published this month in the international peer-reviewed journal Preventive Medicine. In that study, reported by Farmers Forum last month, a 23-year review of data found mean farm fatality rates in children hadn’t changed from 1990 to 2012, and that most fatalities involve machinery.
The researchers said the data “call into question the effectiveness of pediatric farm safety initiatives that primarily focus on education” and pointed out that farms are largely exempted from “safety legislation that protects children in other industrial sectors.”
Put simply, the researchers concluded: “The most efficient method to reduce the burden of child farm death in Canada is to eliminate exposures to the main hazards.”
University of Alberta Injury Prevention Centre director and study author Don Voaklander noted that eliminating hazards is easier said than done. “The farm culture is risk-based all around,” and highly resistant to government intrusion. Provincial legislation in Alberta and federal legislation in the U.S. to apply child labour laws and protections on farms died on the paper. “It’s just so unpalatable to the farm community,” he said.
Exposure to a certain level of risk is often seen as a rite of passage in farm communities as there is an understanding that children need to understand the risks from the earliest possible age to be safe on the farm, he said.
But bad lessons can be learned. One of the things children can learn is modelling risky behaviour, Voaklander said. Rather than putting up a safety barrier or doing safety training, farmers will often simply do the job themselves. “Don’t do what I do, get me to do it,” is often the attitude. “But eventually, there’s the possibility that the person will say: ‘I’ve seen Dad do it a million times, I’ll take care of it.’”
A study he published last year about older farmers had some insights about what does work. Amongst adult farmers, the fatality rate skyrockets after 60, he said. The best way to prevent injuries and death are preventative measures, such as railings on silos, rollover protection on all tractors and maintaining all farm equipment, regardless of age. In other words, things that force farmers to be safe, he said. “The safety environment doesn’t care about you, but it takes care of you.”