CALGARY — Alberta recorded 22 farm fatalities in 1993 with the greatest number occurring during late harvest as farmers raced against the clock to bring in their crops.
Five of them lost the race.
Those statistics are the highest Alberta has experienced for some time, with more than half the fatalities being machinery-related.
Solomon Kyeremanteng of Alberta Agriculture’s farm safety program thinks the high number of deaths in this province are outrageous. If it were any other industry, agriculture would be investigated and shut down, he says.
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One injury requiring medical attention happens every day in Alberta. Not only is there a high cost in human life but medical care in hospital, rehabilitation and income losses are astronomical.
Through groups like the Canadian Federation of Agriculture and Unifarm, industry has to get involved in promoting safety because its own people are getting killed and mangled, Kyeremanteng said.
Some farmers accept such a high accident rate as a hazard of the job.
“I don’t think we should accept that. The drain on our economy is too much for us to accept this,” he said.
The most fatalities in 1993 were in the plus-60 age group. These are older farmers who tire more quickly and whose reaction times are slower. And they are complacent.
“This is the group that knows it all. They have been doing it for generations and ‘who the hell are you to tell me to do it otherwise?'”
Lack of time or money is another reason accidents happen. Farmers will make do with a piece of machinery that isn’t working right rather than spare the time or money to fix it.
Making these vulnerable people change their attitude is often the duty of those closest to the farmer.
“I think women have a major role to play and people underestimate the role rural women play in keeping their spouses safe and sound, ” he said.
His department has noticed accidents can often happen when husbands are at home alone while their wives work off the farm. The men don’t have enough help, don’t take breaks and put off eating, making themselves susceptible to an accident.
But the most effective way to jar adults into taking job safety seriously is the pleas of their children who don’t want their parents to die, said Kyeremanteng. (See “Message is ‘I care'” on page 66.)
