Large farm operators may find it impossible to get good workers if they don’t start taking employee safety seriously, says the head of Alberta’s farm safety program.
Workers have many choices on the Prairies, and working in an unsafe, unregulated environment may not be high on their list.
“They will be competing with industries that have good safety track records, have good pay, have all kinds of benefits that do not exist in agriculture,” said Solomon Kyeremanteng of Alberta Agriculture.
“(Farmers) think deregulation is good for them, but it may be something that will work against them.”
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In Alberta, farm workers are not covered by occupational health and safety regulations that govern all other major industries.
In Saskatchewan and Manitoba, occupational health and safety rules apply to farms, but officials in Saskatchewan say it is hard to enforce them.
Farmers and their children have been getting injured, crippled and killed in farm accidents since farming began on the Prairies. Farm safety experts say farming is the most dangerous occupation in Canada.
Other dangerous industries, such as construction and mining, have radically improved their safety records over the past few decades.
Provincial governments have undertaken many farm safety public education efforts, but the types of deaths that have been virtually banished in other industries have continued in agriculture.
In the past four years, there has been a string of deaths among men working in manure pits and tanks – deaths that safety officials say could be prevented with a little training.
Kyeremanteng said imposing occupational health and safety rules on Alberta farms is practically impossible – at least for now.
“It is very difficult to implement the occupational health and safety rules on farms, especially in Alberta where the mindset is usually on the deregulation,” he said. “Farmers don’t like to be regulated.”
He questioned whether provinces that do impose occupational health and safety rules on farms actually enforce them, or seriously investigate claims.
Kyeremanteng is frustrated and appalled by the continuing litany of farm deaths and injuries every year, something many farmers don’t recognize, even after years of public education efforts.
There are four reported farm injuries per day in Alberta. So far this year, 18 Albertans have died in farm accidents.
“How long can this go on,” Kyeremanteng repeatedly says, a mantra that neatly sums up his outrage.
Farmers may prefer to have their workers free from the rigors of safety regulations, but if they don’t manage to make their operations as safe as other industrial workplaces, they’ll end up suffering too.
“Common sense tells us . . . as farming competes with other sectors of the economy, they will be better off addressing these issues,”
Kyeremanteng said.
