Safety doesn’t always come first on the farm

Most farmers believe they do their jobs safely and most also say they have unwritten rules on their farm to do the work without anyone getting hurt.

But Canadian farmers also say an injury or a near miss hasn’t made them change their work behaviour, nor has it spurred them to put a safety plan on paper.

Those are some of the insights gathered from a recent Farm Credit Canada study done for the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA).

Why it matters: The study shows that despite injuries or near-misses on the farm, farmers do not readily seek out safety information. 

The 2020 survey of roughly 1,200 farmers across Canada produced key information for the national non-profit organization. It showed that seven in 10 producers had experienced an incident resulting in an injury or near miss on their operation at some point in their lives. Twenty-four per cent of producers reported one such event within the last year.

But after those events, farmers weren’t more likely to access safety information or develop more formal safe work procedures.

Only two in 10 producers said in the survey that their work is done safely ‘all the time.’

CASA executive director Andrea Lear spoke about the findings at the organization’s virtual conference last month.

“This seems like a real disconnect to me and we have some work to do,” said Lear. 

“People say, ‘I do things safely,’ but don’t actually do things to support that. We’ve got to figure that out.”

That requires a better understanding of why farmers don’t adopt different behaviours and what prevents them from doing so, other speakers said.

It also requires new kinds of interventions that align with the culture of the Canadian farm, such as improved relevancy, clarity and timing of farm safety information delivery, and understanding the unique culture of agriculture, said Cynthia Beck, a Saskatchewan livestock producer and master’s candidate in clinical psychology.

A fundamental of farm culture is that farmers will always prioritize the workload and get the job done, even at the expense of their health and safety, she said.

“How many of you have ever met a farmer who had a concussion, or a broken leg, or appendicitis and they still went out to get those chores done?” Beck asked her audience.

Farmers have a vast range of responsibilities and heavy workloads. Their individual management styles, family dynamics and the stressors of operating the farm can push safety thoughts to the sidelines. 

When people are stressed and worried about a multitude of things, “challenged mental health is by far the biggest barrier to behaviour change,” Beck said.

FCC survey respondents also indicated old habits are the primary barrier to consistent implementation of safe practices and written safety plans.

The survey showed only one in 10 producers have developed a written safety plan, with 70 per cent of those saying they thought it was effective in preventing injuries.

Nearly as many (60 per cent) said they had unwritten practices and procedures in place.

What stumps groups like CASA is that few producers say they access available farm safety information and training.

Only one in three have done so in the last year. Twenty-eight per cent of farmers said they’ve never accessed safety training.

Lear said it is important that farmers also said they are motivated to improve the safety of their operations.

The job for farm safety groups is to understand why farmers continue to choose as they do, find appropriate interventions, and address gaps between intention and action, she said.

“The important thing to understand is people believe they’re doing things safe, but they’re willing to say they can do things differently.”