New report on farm safety

THE MAGAZINE OF THE ILO: WORLD OF WORK No.22

Author: Ritash Sarna

Agricultural workers run at least twice the risk of dying on the job as workers in other sectors. In a global overview prepared for a recent conference on farm safety and health, the ILO reported that tens of thousands of agricultural workers die each year, and millions suffer injuries, or are poisoned by chemicals.  

"How dangerous is agricultural work? According to a report delivered to a recent international meeting of farm safety and health experts*, significantly more than other jobs. Some 170,000 agricultural workers die each year as a result of work hazards, and millions more of the world's 1.3 billion agricultural workers suffer serious injuries, or poisoning from pesticides or agro-chemicals....

A grim picture

Workers in developing countries are at especially high risk due to inadequate education, training and safety systems. But even in developed countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, agriculture ranks consistently among the most hazardous industries....

Though agriculture accounts on average for 9% of the workforce in most industrialized countries (ranging from 5.2% in the European Union to 20% in Eastern Europe), almost one-half of the world's total workforce remain involved in agricultural production. The largest concentrations are in developing countries: 25% in Latin America, 63% in Africa and 62% in Asia.

Increasingly, women and children are being affected. Mr. Taqi pointed out that "significantly, the share of women in agricultural employment world wide is growing, mainly due to the migration of men to urban centres seeking better opportunities, to the point where women now account for some 43% of the total workforce in agriculture." In addition,child labour is pervasive in agriculture.

Not all rules apply to agriculture

Although conditions vary greatly from country to country, agriculture tends to be excluded from many national labour laws and it is not subject to any comprehensive international standard. Where regulations exist, they are often sporadically applied due to inadequate legal provisions, low levels of unionization and insufficient labour inspection.

In addition to legislative shortcomings, some disadvantages common to most agricultural work include:

• Use of multiple technologies in dissimilar environments, from highly mechanized commercial agriculture to intensive small-scale subsistence agriculture;
• Dispersal of the workforce in remote areas where health services and communications systems are often inadequate or inferior to those in urban areas;
• The wide variety of jobs performed by agricultural workers, especially in small-scale farming, often using inadequate equipment;
• Environmental factors such as working outside in all types of weather, making it difficult to modify working conditions (as for example when sudden gusts of wind arise during the application of pesticides, or rainstorms during harvesting);
• Inadequate application of safety technologies in agriculture compared with industry.

Dangers to life and limb

Major threats to agricultural workers are cutting-tools and machinery (such as tractors and harvesters). More than one-third of the deaths in farm occupations worldwide occurred in tractor-related incidents.

A pesticide peril

Exposure to pesticides and agrochemicals constitutes another major risk for farm workers, accounting in some countries for as much as 14% of all occupational injuries in the agricultural sector and 10% of all fatalities...

High risk, low benefits

In countries throughout the world, agricultural workers are often excluded from any employment injury benefit or insurance scheme. Administrative procedures for collecting injury records are often insufficient, thus reducing the incentive to report injuries or provide resources for compensation....