Farm work can be one of the most dangerous occupations around.
“If farming was a unionized occupation it would be shut down,” said Solomon Kyeremanteng, manager of Alberta Agriculture’s farm safety program.
The dangers of farming, ranging from heavy machinery and chemical use to the effects of farm stress, have made farm safety a big issue.
Yet many people say existing programs have fallen short when it comes to informing young children about the hazards, even though many farms depend upon help from the kids.
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Women of Unifarm president Florence Troutman said: “All these young kids are helping in the farming because of labor. It’s really sad, because some of these kids know the safety aspects of it, but you get so involved with what you’re doing that you forget.”
Verna Kett, past-president of the organization, said lack of daycare is another factor in having kids working in the fields.
“The husband or the wife or both are out there working, so the kids are with them. It’s not a good sight, but I know we’ve all done it.”
Hard on the ears
To help protect children, Women of Unifarm has been holding farm safety hikes for the past 25 years. The group has recently taken on the damaging effect of noise levels as part of the hike.
In terms of farm safety, said Kett, “there’s not a whole lot out there for people to get attached to. If there isn’t a booklet or whatever, people aren’t talking about it.”
This lack of information prompted private initiatives. Marion Leithead started working with Alberta Agriculture’s farm safety program while working on her master’s degree in early childhood development. Leithead, a farmer, said a lack of information for pre-schoolers led to her creation of a hands-on kit for the kids.
“There wasn’t anything, and I thought that that’s a very impressionable time, that’s the time to teach them and reach them, and perhaps we could save a limb or a life.”
Created coloring book
A lack of information for young children also led Rose Valley, Sask. mother Donna Prosko to create a coloring book. “I wanted to teach my own three children about farm safety,” Prosko said. The book is now used in schools across the province.
Ruth and Thelma Cey, Wilkie, Sask.-area farm mothers and schoolteachers, have taken a different approach to farm safety awareness. They have created an environmental safety program called AWARE, Accent on Wellness in Agriculture and Rural Environments, for children aged four to 12.
The program draws attention to “things in your everyday life that you’re not really aware of,” Ruth Cey said. Things like poisonous flowers that might be in the garden, diseases that can be transferred by animals and the impact of farming practices on the environment. The program was distributed to 200 schools last June.
Manitoba farm safety programs usually evolve as collaborative projects between the farming community, government and agri-businesses, said Cathy Vanstone, district home economist for Manitoba Agriculture.
Vanstone was involved with the creation of a video in 1992. Since then the community started the first provincial chapter of the American organization Farm Safety 4 Just Kids.
“They realized that just because they’ve done a video that’s not going to solve all the problems. They wanted to make sure there was ongoing farm safety education in their community.”
Since then, five other chapters of the group have opened across the province.
