Most farmers believe they do their jobs safely, and most also say they have unwritten rules on their farm to do the work without anyone getting hurt.
But Canadian farmers also say an injury, or a near miss, hasn’t made them change their work behaviour, nor has it spurred them to put a safety plan on paper.
Those are some of the insights gathered from a recent Farm Credit Canada Insights study done for the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA).
The 2020 survey of roughly 1,200 farmers across Canada produced some key information for the national non-profit organization, including that seven in 10 producers (72 per cent) had, in fact, experienced some kind of incident resulting in an injury or near miss on their operation at some point in their lifetime. A quarter (24 per cent) of producers reported having had one within the last year.
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Yet, even after those events, farmers weren’t more likely to access safety information or develop more formal safe work procedures.
Just two out of 10 producers said in the survey that their work is done safely ‘all the time.’
CASA executive director Andrea Lear spoke about the findings at the organization’s virtual conference last week.
“This seems like a real disconnect to me,” she said.
“And we have some work to do,” said Lear. “People say, ‘I do things safely,’ but don’t actually do things to support that. We’ve got to figure that out.”
What that requires is better understanding why farmers aren’t adopting different behaviours, and what holds them back from doing so, other speakers said.
It also requires new kinds of interventions that align with the culture of the Canadian farm, including improving the relevancy clarity and timing of farm safety information delivery, and, importantly understanding the unique culture of agriculture, said Cynthia Beck, a Saskatchewan livestock producer and master’s candidate in clinical psychology.
A fundamental of farm culture is that farmers will always prioritize the workload and will get their job done above and beyond everything else, even at the expense of their health and safety, she said.
“How many of you have ever met a farmer who had a concussion, or a broken leg, or appendicitis and they still went out to get those chores done?” she asked her audience.
Farmers have a vast range of responsibilities, heavy workloads, and their individual management styles, family dynamics and stressors that come from operating the farm can all push thinking about these things to the sidelines. And when you’re stressed and worried about a multitude of things, “challenged mental health is by far the biggest barrier to behaviour change,” Beck said.
FCC survey respondents, meanwhile, also indicate old habits are the primary barrier to the consistent implementation of safe practices and written safety plans.
The survey showed only one in 10 producers (14 per cent) have developed a written safety plan, with 70 per cent of those saying they thought it was effective in preventing injuries.
Nearly as many (60 per cent) said they had unwritten practices and procedures in place.
What stumps groups like CASA is that few producers say they access the farm safety information and training available.
Only one in three have done so in the last year. Twenty-eight per cent of farmers said they’ve never accessed safety training.
Lear said what is important however, is that farmers also told this survey that they are motivated to improve the safety of their operations.
The job for farm safety groups is to understand why farmers continue to make the choices they do, find appropriate interventions that align their attitudes with behaviours, and address gaps between intention and action, she said.
“The important thing to understand is people believe they’re doing things safe, but they’re willing to say they can do things differently,” she said.
