Heavy lifting, unpredictable animals and dangerous machinery are all things producers need to consider when thinking about safety.
March 12-18 is Canadian Agricultural Safety Week, an annual event organized by the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association.
“We felt that one of the key ways to highlight the awareness of farm safety is to do a bit of a blitz at the beginning of the year, and then use that to set the stage for all the activities that happen during the rest of the year,” said Marcel Hacault, executive director of CASA.
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The campaign’s focus this year is strains, sprains and falls. According to CASA, sprains and strains are Canada’s leading cause of farm injury, followed by livestock handling, machine related overexertion and falls.
Statistics Canada reports that musculoskeletal disorders such as back pain account for 15 percent of agricultural injuries, and cost society $16.4 billion in treatment, rehabilitation and lost productivity.
According to a study done by the Canadian Agricultural Injury Surveillance Program (CAISP), overexertion was the leading cause of strains and sprains between the years 1990 and 2000.
Animal-related injuries were the second leading cause of strains and sprains, but were the primary cause in all reported fractures and dislocations.
“If you were to pick the spike, I guess, it’s really dairy farmers that are the most susceptible to musculoskeletal injuries, because of the way they work and the way they have to work,” said Hacault.
Dairy farmers look after their animals better than themselves. Because of this, human safety upgrades are often seen as an expense when they should be viewed as an investment in the farmers’ safety and future.
That being said, some dairy farmers are creative when it comes to saving their bodies. Hacault was impressed after hearing how one man and his sons had installed an adjustable floor in their milking parlor.
“He was short and his sons were tall, so he was always stretching and his sons were always crouching … depending on who was milking, they could just adjust the height to be conducive to who was working there.”
It is also important for anyone who works on a farm to remember that the animals they deal with are, on average, 360 kilograms heavier than they are.
“If you don’t have the proper facilities or your animal’s just ornery and you didn’t wake up sensing that, you’re on the receiving end of a lot more horsepower than you’re probably used to,” said Hacault. “If you’ve got loading facilities, you should be designing them with an exit so you don’t get pinned.”
Humphrey Banack, president of Alberta’s Wild Rose Agricultural Producers, has a similar philosophy when it comes to working with animals in enclosed places.
“We always try to make sure that when our cows calve, that there’s an escape … and we always try to make sure that there’s two people whenever we’re handling an animal, so that if something does go wrong you have a rescue person.”
Still, statistics show that machines are far more dangerous than anything made of flesh and blood. According to CAISP, tractor-related injuries were the leading cause of work-related agricultural fatalities between 1990 and 2000.
Banack has a specific policy regarding the use of machinery on his farm.
“While we’re in a dangerous area, we have a signal that we use: two hands up, and the operator puts his hands up, and when that happens the operator knows he’s not supposed to touch anything till I come out and give him the signal.”
Although deaths involving machinery may get more coverage in the press, Hacault said strains and sprains can also result from using farm equipment. Not all machinery-related injuries are fatal, or even the result of accidents.
The mere act of operating a tractor for an extended period of time can be enough to cause some musculoskeletal injury.
Grain farmers can injure their necks by checking over their shoulder repetitively, and sitting in a tractor seat for hours at a time isn’t a good way to maintain a healthy spine.
“I know it sounds silly to stretch before getting into a tractor … but if you’re putting in 12, 20 hours, you should probably think about (it),” said Hacault.
As for Banack, aside from the occasional sore back from shoveling grain, the only pain he can think of is one that is probably common to most farmers.
“It’s a pain in the ass sometimes. It’s a tough job.”
