You do what you have to do, one farmer says when explaining the common
habit of taking young children to the farm worksite.
Verna Thompson said most farmers are caught by time and money, and too
isolated to try alternative solutions. When a farmer is kilometres away
from the neighbours and needs help, he will often turn to his wife.
With the spouse come the children in the truck.
It is a better alternative than leaving young children alone in the
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house, Thompson told a farm injury meeting held Nov. 20 for the rural
municipal delegates attending the Saskatchewan Alliance for
Agricultural Health and Safety conference.
Thompson recounted an incident in which she was away and machinery had
to be moved. Her 10- and 11-year-old daughters were drafted into
service.
“When I heard about it, I went ballistic. (But) we didn’t do anything
different than any other farm family.”
Fellow panelist Del Haug, a medical professor at the University of
Saskatchewan, agreed with Thompson.
“The reality is there is a lot of work to be done (on a farm) and not a
lot of bodies to do it.”
But those shrugged arguments weren’t sufficient for Dr. Will Pickett of
Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont. He asked why the practice of
having toddlers around farm work is “rarely questioned” by the media,
the farm community, farm safety experts or police.
His findings as a member of the Canadian Agricultural Injury
Surveillance team led him to challenge his farmer audience. A farm
child under the age of six is twice as likely to die as the average
Canadian preschooler, he said.
While he understands farmers prefer to have their children nearby to
teach them pride, independence and the work ethic, Pickett said farm
families must follow two rules:
- Toddlers should never be brought into the farm worksite. They should
play in fenced-off areas away from machinery and animals.
- Parents trying to decide at what age kids can do chores must follow
the guidelines he helped develop. These North American Guidelines for
Children’s Agricultural Tasks are available from most farm safety
groups. They break about 60 tasks into steps that parents can use to
check if their child is ready to assume the chore.
In analyzing the statistics, Pickett said there are three reasons why
farm children deaths are low in British Columbia:
- B.C. has fewer farms, 20,000 to Ontario’s 60,000 and Saskatchewan’s
51,000.
- It is a different farming style.
- B.C. requires its farmers to belong to the Workers’ Compensation
Board. Farms are exempt in most provinces from belonging to these
quasi-government agencies that penalize unsafe workplaces.
The Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board has 1,222 farm accounts
out of a possible 51,000. Bruce Venne, manager of audits and
collections for the board, said that in 2001, farms made 93 claims and
were paid $1.2 million, about $220,000 less than was taken in as
premiums.
Farm premiums are $4.62 per $100 of payroll. While that is higher than
the provincial workplace average of $1.72, it is much lower than the
highest premium, which is logging at about $16.
Venne said he didn’t know why farmers don’t join the compensation board
voluntarily, but noted the agency is examining whether to make
participation compulsory for intensive livestock operations and large
value-added processing farm workplaces.
