Machinery is one of the biggest risks to a farmer’s life and ability to keep farming.
But injury and disability experts think a new toolkit they’re about to provide might keep more farmers safe, and allow disabled farmers to continue farming.
“This is about how to keep farming communities safe,” said Olga Krassioukova-Enns, the executive director of the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies in Winnipeg.
This fall her organization will release a practical resource kit that can be used in rural and farm communities to prevent and deal with disabilities that affect farming.
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She said disability information and education needs to be specifically tailored to farmers because it isn’t just another industry.
“There’s a very unique culture in farming areas,” said Krassioukova-Enns.
Not only are farmers temperamentally independent and self-reliant, but they also often live a long way from towns and cities where most disability support services can be provided.
“Farmers often have to rely mostly on themselves,” she said.
The Healthy Farmers resource kit is an attempt to bring together information from many sources, rather than a stand-alone project.
The centre has been working with a number of organizations, including Farmers With Disabilities, to connect the resources that communities need to support farmers who are injured, ill or have physical problems that get in the way of farming life.
This particular project was partially funded by the Manitoba Workers Compensation Board, which was interested in improving farmer safety and support, Krassioukova-Enns said.
Even though most farmers do not pay premiums to and are not covered by provincial WCB programs, the Manitoba board saw value in keeping the agricultural workforce safe and productive, Krassioukova-Enns said.
Although asked to help fund the centre, Saskatchewan’s WCB didn’t, but Krassioukova-Enns hopes it will come on-side for the next phase of toolkit development.
Information package
While small rural communities often lack the organized systems of disability support that are common in cities, this toolkit should help many either establish them, or find who to turn to when there’s a need.
But the biggest challenge will still be the traditional farm safety problem: making farmers aware of the risks they take every day.
“They take risks that are not necessary to take,” said Krassioukova-Enns.
And they take risks for granted.
One of her own brothers-in-law, a Manitoba farmer, recently caught his hand in a press. He escaped without injury but she fears lessons aren’t being learned from these commonplace hazards.
“I asked him: ‘did you sit down with your kids and talk about this accident?’ He said ‘no.’ I said ‘why not? They will do the same thing.’ “
George Dyck, president of the centre’s board of directors, said older farmers need to pass on their safety knowledge to younger farmers and farm workers.
This summer his son, who is working on a farm, had a large tear in his work jeans. George suggested he sew it up before wearing them again to the farm.
“He said: ‘It’s too much trouble.’ I said: ‘It’s just not safe.’ “
But the centre is also hoping to reverse the normal knowledge flow. It is thinking of turning children into farm families’ safety monitors.
If they can be taught through organizations like 4-H to identify and discover dangers on their parents’ farm, they can possibly cajole their mothers and fathers to work safer.
