Intervention - Worker Protection from Environmental Hazards

You were talking on a world scale, an
international scale, however, and that is
big. We do not have much of a problem
with equine encephalitis. When we do
have it, we encourage the people to stay
in.

In the Midwest our biggest problem with
the farmer will be the infections they may
get from being scraped when they work
with confinement housing. Some of these
can really be problems.

Tetanus is one of the things I talk more
about than I do about the vectors; we do
have some people that can be affected by
anaphylactic shock, and this is the one
where the bee stings will get the individu-
als. Again, I was glad that you were talk-
ing about the worldwide problem, because
I know that Panama has a different prob-
lem than we have; we do have to look ona
bigger scale.

Dr. Konz was talking about some of the
problems of people. I think of milkers’
knee. People say, "What is milkers’ knee?"

Dairymen in New York know what milk-
ers’ knee is. We talk about tractor drivers’
disease, and that is the one that is back-
related.

Even stepping up on some of those
27-inch-high steps can be a real problem.
I got to thinking about some of these
things that are hidden from us.

We have a young lady here from the
College of Medicine, Dr. Susanna Von
Essen, who has been doing a lot of work
on respiratory problems. We are glad to
have her. I started looking at this com-
munity of respiratory therapists.

376

One of the things that blew my mind was
when I found out that the Phelps County
Hospital at Holdredge, Nebraska, last year
had 370 cases of respiratory problems.
That is a lot of people.

Yet our respiratory therapists are not or-
ganized. I was going to say they are loose-
ly organized. They are not organized at
all. We have a lot of peoplé who we can
gather all kinds of information from, but
they are isolated because nobody has ever
gotten them together. I am hoping that
Susanna can do this. We have a lot of
information out there that is just waiting to
be gathered.

LESSONS FROM BILL STUCKEY

Dr. Erisman and I had a mentor, Bill
Stuckey from Ohio State University. Ray
Forsythe who is in attendance, did also.
Bill Stuckey was an Extension Safety
Specialist at Ohio State.

I will never forget a few things that Bill
taught me. One of the things he taught
me was "You never know until you ask."
That is why when I go after statistics, a lot
of people say I will get turned down.
Well, you do not know until you ask. So I
go ask them. I have never been turned
down yet.

We have a new generation of people com-
ing along. When you listened to Dr. Konz
this morning, you almost thought he was
anti-education. He is not anti-education.

Bill Stuckey had a little saying. He said
there were those who "Knew not Joseph."
What did this mean? Joseph was the king
of a nice little kingdom for 48 years, and
everybody loved Joseph. Joseph went out
of power and a new king came in. Within

Papers and Proceedings
a year, there were those who knew not
Joseph.

We have some little boys and girls being
born today who know not safety. Some-
body has to teach them. That is where we
in extension come in. They have to "know
Joseph"; they have to know safety.

TRAINING AND EDUCATION

A couple of comments came up here about
training people. It has been my idea that
you train people with the right idea.

I have raised golden retriever dogs since
1958. I run them in trials. People say,
“Okay, you are a dog trainer. How do you
keep dogs from chasing cars?"

That is simple. I keep them kenneled up.
I take them out and train them. I teach
them what I want them to know. That is
it. I do not worry about their chasing cars
because they never run free. Those dogs
are not imposed on because they love it
when we get out. That is our time.

You heard the comment the other day by
Dr. Johnsrud about 23,000 youth trained in
Nebraska in tractor safety. There are
going to be about 24,500 trained by the
end of this year.

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health ~ 1991

An Extension Specialist’s Perspective, May 2, 1991

I raised two boys. I believe that young
people have to work. They have the same
needs that I have. They have a need for
money so that they can buy things. This is
why we have trained these young people.

Some interesting things. At North Platte,
there are a lot of ranchers who will take
the kids into the sand hills and keep them
there for 2 weeks while they are putting up
hay. They will not take a youth up there if
they have not had the safety training.

One rancher told me 20 years ago that
"One of your students was with me. The
boy told me I was doing something wrong."
He said, "That boy was right.". He wanted
trained students.

So we keep on training them. We lost
two of our trainees in accidents, both in
1971. They were both extra riders; both
14. This was within a 3-week period.
They were extra riders on tractors and fell
off. That is it. I guess they did not listen
too well.

Dr. Konz questioned in education that
maybe we did not get the information
across to them, maybe we did not educate
well enough. Gary alluded to this yester-
day.

This has been an excellent opportunity for
me to comment on these five papers.O

377
Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health
FaRMSAFE 2000 ¢ A National Coalition for Local Action

Convened by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
April 30 - May 3, 1991, Des Moines, lowa

AN AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE

By L. Dale Baker
Product Safety Engineer, J.1. Case Company

 

Dr. David S. Pratt: We next have L. Dale Baker. Dale is trained in agricultural engineering from the
University of Nebraska. He spent two years at Michigan State University in the Agricultural
Engineering Department. Closer to my home turf, he was in Ithaca at Cornell University as the
Agricultural Extension Safety Engineer. He spent 10 years in product safety engineering with

 

International Harvester and JI Case. Currently, he is the Manager of Safety and Legislation,
Agricultural Equipment Group, with JI Case. Mr. Baker:

 

 

It is a pleasure to be here. I would like to
tell you a little about my experience on the
farm. Then you can evaluate the biases
and perspective of my comments.

I am from Brandon, Manitoba, Canada.
With few exceptions, farming near Brand-
on is no different from farming in North
Dakota. Farm life and farm issues are
much the same.

I grew up on a family farm that was passed
to my father and my uncle from the grand-
parents. It was a traditional succession in
farms in those days. They operated that
farm as a partnership.

There were two houses on that farm, a
couple of hundred yards apart. I had two
older brothers and in the other family
there were four children, three boys and a
girl. I was the youngest of seven children.

Somewhat by the accident of birth, being
the youngest, I was the one who had to
leave home. The choice was made on an
economic basis, rather than any concern
for personal safety.

Today, my brother operates the farm that

_ he has expanded to about 2,000 acres.
"Fhe farm is on the upper slopes that sur-

378

rounded a glacial lake bed, many thou-
sands of years ago.

The land at the bottom of the lake bed
will provide adequate income for the farm
family. On the surrounding land, it is
difficult to obtain adequate crop yields to
financially survive. Therefore, my brother
and his wife also have full-time jobs off-
the-farm.

My brother works full-time as a welding
instructor at the local community college.
His wife is a full professor at the local
university. With that income, they are able
to sustain the lifestyle that they chose, to
live on the farm.

My brother has some beef cattle and grows
grain primarily to support the cattle. They
also raise malting barley, as there is a
premium for malting barley.

My sister-in-law likes to raise horses, train
those horses for riding, and sell them. She
has a total herd of about 45 horses.

One of those cousins who grew up with me
has been in a relatively new business for
about 15 years. He is collecting pregnant
mares’ urine. He has a herd of about sixty
horses that he puts in the barn every fail.

Papers and Proceedings
They are strapped to a harness that col-
lects the urine from those pregnant mares.
That urine is refined for estrogen. This is
not traditional agriculture.

That snapshot leads to several observations
that illustrate the bias of my comments
about safety on the farm:

¢ Farming is becoming a very diversified
business.

¢ Many farmers are in an economic
squeeze but continue to live and work
on the farm as a choice in life-style.

¢ This is a family-farm environment
where there are no migrant workers.

* Many farmers are relatively well-educat-
ed.

* It is generally the family who is the pur-
chaser and operator of agricultural
equipment.

HUMAN FACTORS

In commenting on the presentation by

Dr. Konz, I agree with the concepts that
were presented this morning. We, as an
industry, wish to promote and are promot-
ing human factors or ergonomics in our
pro

ducts.

I am a member of the Human Factors
Society. There are quite a number of
practitioners or consultants at work in our
industry. I agree with the concept, as a
design philosophy, that the machine should
adjust to the man.

We should be designing the machine to fit
the man. As a design philosophy, we are
working to do that.

Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health ~ 1991

An Agricultural Engineering Perspective, May 2, 1991

When I get concerned is if someone makes
the assumption that this design philosophy
should be the legal requirement. As an
example, it is impossible to build a ma-
chine that may resemble a tractor that will
not roll over. Such a machine will not
function as a tractor. I am not yet aware
of how we can build a functioning tractor
that will not overturn.

I repeat, however, that we are in agree-
ment with those ideas and concerns in er-
gonomics as a design philosophy. You will
see those kinds of concepts on new prod-
ucts.

 

I am not yet aware of how we can build
a functioning tractor that will not over-
turn.

 

OLD AND NEW TECHNOLOGY

Let us take a moment to compare tractors
in use today with automobiles in use today.
Consider a 1971 automobile and a 1991
automobile. They are quite different.

Items on new cars include the center-
mounted stop lamp, rear-impact bumpers,
improved door latches, anti-lock brakes,
crush resistance in the roof, side protection
in the door panel, and improved tires.
These are all innovations that are signifi-
cant to the development of the 1991 auto-
mobile.

A 1991 tractor is also quite a different
creature than the tractor that was built 20
years ago. Many of the same innovations
on cars are used on tractors. The in-
gress/egress, control, steering, and interior
styling of many new tractors are compara-
ble to 1991 automobiles.

379
Intervention - Worker Protection from Environmental Hazards

What do we see in terms of 20-year-old
automobiles on the highway? How many
do you see? Five percent? I think it is
less than that.

I think that when you do see them that
they are on display or going from one auto
show to another. They are antiques. How
many of the tractors that are in use today
are more than 20 years old?

About a third of the tractors out there, in
use today. That is, probably a million
tractors, for a round number, are more
than 20 years old.

Another interesting phenomenon is that a
tractor design can survive for about 15
years; it may go a little longer. You will
find considerable variation in the design of
new tractors on the dealer’s lot due to this
delay in the design cycle.

Some of the features that Gary (Erisman)
mentioned are already available on some
tractors. Hydraulic controls, couplers, and
hoses are labeled with numbers and flow
direction on most newly designed tractors.

Changes in technology allow us to do
things now that were not possible 20 years
ago or 10 years ago. Many of you will
remember the problems that President
Carter had in trying to send some helicop-
ters into Iran in 1979. About ten helicop-
ters were sent. Many of them had prob-
lems and the mission was abandoned.

Compare that with what just happened in
Desert Storm. There were tremendous
changes in the reliability of the equipment.

In those days (pre-1979), transistors were
experiencing 100 percent burn-in. That
means that when you bought an electronic
controller, "the black box," you would

380

check 100 percent of those transistors.
Now, the transistors are not checked at all
because there is fantastic reliability of the
transistors coming from the supplier.

Because the electronic “black box" now
available is very reliable, new electronic-
based systems can now be added to farm
equipment. One example is an operator’s
presence system now used on combines. If
the operator is out of the combine seat for
more than 5 seconds, the combine header
will shut off.

Other new applications of electronic tech-
nology will depend on the development of |
reliable sensor technology. The sensor
must be as reliable as the electronic con-
trol box. This reliability should develop
much like the reliability of transistors has
evolved.

Another important development is the
customer acceptance of this new technolo-
gy. There seems to be a general accep-
tance of new safety innovations that may
stem, in part, from Lee Iacocca advertising
air bags.

ROLL-OVER PROTECTION

We have had a great deal of discussion, in
this session, about Roll-over Protection
Structures (ROPS). We have all seen the
slide, many times, of the success of ROPS
in Sweden.

In 1985, we had a commitment by the
North American tractor manufacturers to
make ROPS standard on all tractors. With
a few exceptions of tractors that are being
imported into this country and those that
are for orchard applications, all tractors
since that time are equipped with ROPS.

Papers and Proceedings
By 1970, ROPS in this country became
available on virtually all major
manufacturers’ product lines. There was
no demand for them. Therefore, we have
a significant number of tractors in opera-
tion in the U.S. that were built in that
interval between 1970 and 1985 that are
not equipped with ROPS.

I would suggest, in gross terms, that there
are about a million tractors that are
equipped with ROPS or that have ROP
structures built into the cab. About a
million tractors that are out there could

have a ROPS installed on them but do not.

Another million tractors that are in use
were built prior to this introduction of
ROPS and here installation of ROPS be-
comes a real technological issue. Now we
should look at those two issues separately.

Pre-1970 Tractors

In putting ROPS onto tractors that were
built prior to 1970, there are some signifi-
cant technical issues. Will the tractor
structure survive an impact with this ROPS
attached? The structure was not built for
that kind of use.

New frames could be designed, possibly, to
accommodate the design by sharing the
load forward to the transmission housing.

There is now a need to develop that new
structure. There were many applications
for those old tractors where implements
were attached to the same location that we
would attach this ROP structure. If you
destroy that, you have destroyed the utility
of that tractor.

There is also the issue of the economics of
putting those ROPS on old tractors. If
there is to be a program of that nature, it

Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

An Agricultural Engineering Perspective, May 2, 1991

is going to have to start with the develop-
ment of some pubic policy change that will
create that demand. Is anyone going to
invest the time and effort to develop new
designs unless there is, in fact, a demand?

1970-1985 Tractors

The issue for tractors built in the interval
between 1970 and 1985 where a ROPS can
be installed becomes an issue of how to
create an environment where the public
demands those ROPS. They are available.

A demand undoubtedly could bring down
the cost that was mentioned earlier. Until
there is a demand, there will not be any
initiative that will cause that to happen. It
is the chicken and the egg situation.

If you could decrease the cost, maybe you
could increase the demand. You cannot
decrease the cost, however, until there is a
demand. We are now again looking at
what is a public policy issue of how you
create that demand.

 

Is anyone going to invest the time and
effort to develop new designs unless

there is, in fact, a demand?

 

I would say to you that my brother is
aware of the issues of ROPS and tractor
overturns. But fatal tractor overturns are a
rare event (a farmer is far more likely to
be killed in a car accident than a tractor
overturn).

Virtually all farmers are aware of the issue
of fatal tractor overturns in the same sense
that farmers (and the general public) are
aware of the issue of cigarette smoking

387
Intervention ~ Worker Protection from Environmental Hazards

causing cancer. What does it take to cause
people to stop smoking cigarettes?

We could also talk about our desire, as a
general public, to drive cars, which have an
air bag and have anti-lock brakes. Clearly,
as a general population, we are safer if all
of the cars in use by 1995 have air bags
and anti-lock brakes. What does it take to
make you and me invest in new cars or
stop smoking? Solving these same kinds of
issues, I think, solves the issues for the
farm population.

CONCLUSION

I would make one quick comment on sta-
tistics. In virtually all the groups at this

382

conference, we have been talking about
this issue of statistics. We are all talking
about such diverse numbers that some of
us are loathe to mention any numbers at
all.

Injury statistics should be a number one
priority. I hope that this message is com-
ing through from all of the other groups.

What are the recommendations that I
would make based on what we have heard
in this conference, especially in this room?
I think we are looking at some significant
public policy issues in which the farm popu-
lation needs to be involved in creating the
answers.O

Papers and Proceedings
Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health

FarMSare 2000 « A National Coalition for Local Action

Convened by the National institute for Occupational Safety and Health

April 30 - May 3, 1991, Des Moines, lowa

HEALTH EDUCATION

By Rodney Gilmore, B.S., B.A.
Injury Control Program Manager
North Dakota State Department of Public Health

 

 

Dr. Walter J. Armbruster: Let me turn to our first presenter, Rodney Gilmore, wio is with the Injury
Control—or, | should say—is the Injury Control Program Manager for the North Dakota State
Department of Public Health. His topic is Health Education as an intervention related to safe
behavior among adults and children. Mr. Gilmore:

 

 

I have been with the State Health
Department approximately one year. Prior
to that, I worked with the North Dakota
State Worker’s Compensation Insurance
Fund in the area of occupational health,
particularly looking at injuries and rehabil-
itation.

I come from a farm family in North
Dakota. I am a native of North Dakota,
and my family still farms. I guess if it
were lucrative enough, I would be back
farming instead of being here today.

I have had a strong interest in farm safety
and agricultural safety. We have heard
some of the testimonies of some of the
individuals that have had direct involve-
ment in farm injuries. That is some of my
background.

I lost my grandfather to a farm-family
injury and also my best friend’s dad, when
I was in high school. Those two things
have stayed with me for a long time. I
welcome the opportunity to be able to
work in this area and to hopefully have
some impact on it.

Even though it is a serious field, we still
have to look at life and enjoy life and, I
guess, look for some humor in it.

I would like to start out the presentation
with a joke I heard last week at the CDC

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

Injury Conference in Denver. The story
was told by an attorney.

An attorney had a farmer on the witness
stand who had sustained an injury in a
pick-up roll-over. He was suing the indi-
vidual that ran him off the road. The
defendant’s attorney had him on the wit-
ness stand and said to this farmer

"Mr. Farmer, I want you to answer this
question yes or no. Is it true that when
the highway patrolman got to you when
you were laying in the ditch and you had
just gotten up, that he asked you how you
felt and you said, ‘Just fine’?" The farmer
said, "Yes, but..." The attorney said,
"Wait a minute, I said yes or no." He sat
down.

The farmer’s attorney said to the judge,
"There are some extenuating circumstanc-
es, and I would like for the plaintiff here
to be able to tell his side of the story."
The judge said, "Okay." The farmer said,
"Well, the reason I said I was okay." He
said, " The accident happened when I was
coming around a curve. I had just come
back from a sale. I bought a brand new
bull, I should say, a new bull; I bought this
prize bull and paid quite a bit of money
for him. I had him in the back of my
pick-up and came around this curve.

Here were these two vehicles coming at
me. One of them had passed on a double

383
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

yellow line. He ran me off the road, and I
went down the ditch and rolled the pick-up
over and the bull went flying one way and
the pick-up went the other way. I ended
up getting thrown out of the pick-up."

"Right after the accident happened this pa-
trolman walked up, looked at me, and he
walked over and looked at my bull. Then
he walked back to me and said, "Your bull
looks in pretty rough shape,’ and I said,
"Yes, he is.’ With that the patrolman
walked over, drew his pistol out and shot
the bull between the eyes. Then he walked
back over to me, with the pistol in his
hand, and he looked down at me and he
said, Now, how do you feel?”"

To start it out, I would like to give you a
preview of North Dakota and what it is
like up there. The Department of Tourism
is not paying for the trip, even though it
may seem like it. I would like to give you
some information we have gathered on
Statistics that we have been monitoring in
the state before we get into our programs.

There is a train in North Dakota, and I
guess the farming practices are just as
varied as the train is. In eastern North
Dakota our land is flat. In fact, water
hardly drains off, and a lot of farmers have
equipment to level the land because in the
Red River Valley the rain will just sit on
it. The ground is very fertile. We have
sugar beets and potatoes, two of our big-
gest crops in eastern North Dakota. Even
though the land is so flat, we still have a
tendency to have tractor roll-overs in the
eastern part of the state.

We have got a lot of row crops. Asa
consequence, we do have migrant workers
come up in the summertime to work our
sugar beets and potatoes. Approximately

384

17,000 to 18,000 migrant workers come
into the state every year.

As you get to the central part of the state,
it is typical high plains, much more rolling.
You have interspersed agriculture with
cattle and ranching. I guess a pretty good-
-sized farm in central North Dakota is one
of our typical farms.

We have approximately 34,000 farms in
North Dakota. We have 115,000 farmers
directly involved in farming. When you
add in the families, we are looking at
275,000 farm family members who are
involved in agriculture in some shape or
form.

The central part of the state has both
agriculture and pasture. As you move fur-
ther west in the state, you get into the
Missouri River drainage. The land starts
becoming much more rolling and much
hillier. We do have large equipment in
the state. Our average size farm is approx-
imately 1,100 acres. So it is pretty good
sized. We do have a lot of ranching in the
central and western parts of the state.

As you move farther west, the land does
get quite a bit rougher. When people talk
about North Dakota, they generally think
of it as fairly flat agricultural land. The
western part of our state, however, is pret-
ty scenic. Again, this is not pitched by the
Tourism Department, but out in western
North Dakota it is pretty. We have a lot
of rough terrain out there and a lot of
wildlife: bighorn sheep, deer, antelope, etc.

Activities out there are hazardous. A lot
of ranchers have gotten away from utilizing
pick-ups to go out and check their cattle
and run through their pastures because
they were finding out it did not take too

Papers and Proceedings
long to beat up and wear out a $24,000
pick-up.

They have gone back to utilizing $1,000
horses for checking fence and working
cattle. Most of the western part of the
state is considered semi-arid.

We do have some areas out there that
have been very dry the last three years.
Before I came down here, we did start to
get some moisture, which was welcome.

We have this tendency in South Dakota
and in Montana to put old thrash
machines up on a hill. I have not the
faintest idea why it is done. We have
talked to a lot of people, and it just got to
be a fad. Farmers will take an old thrash
machine and stick it up on a hill where
people can see it when they drive by on
the roads.

There has been a program to eradicate
these. That was being conducted by peo-
ple who have had one too many beers at
the local tavern. They go out there at
night and push them down the hill!

The farm injuries in North Dakota are a
serious matter. We have begun taking
them much more seriously. We have fair
media coverage in North Dakota as to
what has been happening in the area of
farm safety. Some of the media coverage
and their support has led to much more
interest in safety. This has led to the de-
velopment of some of our programs.

We started out back in 1985 with a CDC
grant looking at doing injury surveillance
in the state. At that time, we asked medi-
cal facilities to report any injury that was
fatal or disabling, or kept the injured per-
son from effectively participating in their
normal daily activities for one day beyond

Health Education, May 1, 1991

the date of the injury. We began that in
April of 1985.

We developed an injury report card that
went to the medical facilities, and we
asked them to complete it. We tried to
make it as short as possible.

There are two sides to this, to solicit their
cooperation and to try not to make it too
complicated. We did that from 1985
through December of 1990.

Beginning in January 1981, we started with
a different case definition. With concur-
rence of the CDC, we are looking at only
the injury events that are fatal, disabling,
or result in the injured person being hospi-
talized for 24 hours or more. We are
trying to look at more of the severe inju-
ries.

We redid our injury report card and hand-
ed that out to all of the medical facilities
in the state. Reporting in North Dakota is
purely voluntary. We did not mandate
reporting. The North Dakota Head Injury
Foundation did get a bill passed two years
ago mandating that head injuries be re-
ported to the State Health Department.
We do collect data on that.

We look at the injuries, and we classify
them by ICD-9 Codes and E-codes. Two
of our major hospitals in the state, metro-
politan hospitals, are going to start report-
ing injuries by E, their trauma centers.
They will do a computer run for us and
send it to us every month. They will break
it down by head injuries, agricultural inju-
ries, and just injuries in general.

We talked at the CDC Injury Conference
and decided that mandating E-coding or
getting E coding in all medical facilities
will be a primary key to developing a good

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health ~ 1991 385
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

surveillance system. This will enable us to
find out what is going on out there, partic-
ularly in the agricultural area.

When we first started out, in 1985 and
1986, our injury reporting was way up. By
1989 it had dropped drastically. The rea-
son for that was really the fault of the
program personnel.

 

We learned that in order to keep a good
surveillance system going, you must keep
direct and frequent contact with the medi-

cal facilities and with the providers who
are giving you the information.

 

We had some budget constraints and the
position was open for about one year.

One of the things we learned is that there
is a constant turnover in personnel in the
medical facilities, particularly in medical
records. The emphasis on reporting would
get pushed to the side as people came into
the jobs and were trained.

Unless there was contact from the Health
Department or from our program, report-
ing got pushed way down. Consequently,
the numbers dropped off. We learned that
in order to keep a good surveillance sys-
tem going, you must keep direct and fre-
quent contact with the medical facilities
and with the providers who are giving you
the information.

Agricultural injurjes dropped off, as far as
what was reported, comparable to overall
injuries on a reporting system. Again, that
was as a result of our program not keeping
contact with the providers. We are look-
ing at breakdown of injuries, and it mimics
the national statistics. Tractors and
machines accounted for the lion’s share of

386

our injuries that were reported through the
surveillance system.

When we looked at the age groups, again,
we ran pretty much in line with Federal
and national statistics. The age group of
20 to 29 has the highest incident-rate of
injuries. When we looked at male/female,
we saw the breakdown of about 95 percent
injured being males.

When we started looking at injuries and
fatalities, we had a drop-off of our injuries
reported due to the program. We get the
fatalities from the death certificates that
are available in the Vital Statistics Division
of health departments. Our fatalities have
dropped somewhat from 1985 through
1987, down to 13 in 1989 and 11 in 1990.

On the fatalities, again, we saw tractors
and machinery as being the major cause of
farm-related fatalities.

When we looked at the age group on our
fatalities from 1985 to 1990, there were
two age groups that we were of particular
concern: the 0-to-19 age group and at 50
and over. Our older farmers were having
a disproportionate share of the
farm-related fatalities.

Right now we are going back to do case
reviews on the fatalities. We will deter-
mine what interventions we need to do for
that particular age group to develop a
program that is going to target older farm-
ers, looking at causation on farm-related
fatalities.

We did have the greatest share of the
fatalities during the time period from our
spring planting in April to the end of our
harvest season in September and October.
We did, however, have fatalities through
all the months of the year, even when it

Papers and Proceedings
was cold, and people were indoors as
much as they could be in the wintertime.

We found males as having 90 percent and
females just about 10 percent of the fatali-
ties, which was a little higher ratio for the
females than it was on the injuries.

Also, we find more farm-related, or agri-
culture-related, suicides as compared to
suicides in general in the state. They have
stayed somewhat constant over the course
of the last 10 years.

This past year, for farm injuries that were
reported during 1990, we saw all types of
machinery as the primary cause of
agricultural-related injuries that were seen
in the state. This past year we saw a shift
into the age group of 30 to 39 having a
higher share of the agriculture-related
injuries compared to overall statistics of
age group 20 to 29. Utilizing that informa-
tion, we applied for and received grant
information from the Centers for Disease
Control for injury-intervention programs in
North Dakota targeting agricultural groups.

One of the first programs we developed
was with the North Dakota Emergency
Medical Technicians (EMT) and Emer-
gency Transmatic Cars (ETC) Association.
We have approximately 125 ambulance
and rescue squads scattered across the
State. Most are in rural areas; they are
volunteer squads.

Each year we had 20 ambulance squads
putting on a farm safety program. It is on
the cover of the handbook that goes with
the Farm Injury Prevention Program. It is
a three- to four-hour program. The re-
sponse from the agricultural community
has been tremendous.

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

Health Education, May 1, 1991

It targets farm family members. In the
rural areas the EMT squad will take 1 or 2
nights, publicize a local program, and offer
some type of barbecue dinner or a social
get-together to bring the farm family mem-
bers together. Surprisingly, we have had
several communities with only 100 to 150
people have upwards of 265 people come
and sign up for this program. They are
willing to sit down for 3 to 4 hours to go
through an educational program.

 

There is a video presentation that goes
with this handbook. It is set up in an
instructional manner where they will view
the video for 15 to 20 minutes.

They break down into groups and work for
15 or 20 minutes in a group with different
stations. The EMT squad wanted to be
able to do some basic first aid and some
resuscitation, in addition to the safety pro-
gram.

They also look at doing First Response on
how to contact the EMS service. One of
the things the dispatchers were finding in
North Dakota, through EMS, is that we do
have a lot of Norwegians and Swedes in
North Dakota.

Someone would call up and say, "Hurry up.
Get out here. There’s been an accident at
the Olson farm." The dispatcher would
look at his listing for that area and there
are 15 Olson farms. Then he wonders,
Which one is it?

They get back on the phone and start
calling around, hoping someone was still in
the house that they could contact. One of
the things that this program teaches (not
only to the adults but to the children in the
family) is if an adult is injured, the correct
manner of calling EMS is how you give the
location, and if you know a basic descrip-

387
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

tion of the injury, what type of injury it
was. Then EMS can prepare themselves
on the way to the farm site.

The EMS would get to farm sites and
could not find where the person was. The
caller did not say if it were out in the field
or what type of field; if it was a barn, or if
it was in a silo. The EMS would have to
drive around the farm looking for the
injured person because all the farm family
members were out there.

That was another component on which we
put a strong emphasis, the correct manner
in contacting EMS. The time frame from
the time of the injury until the individual
receives medical care is critical. If we can
cut that down by a number of minutes, it is
going to help as far as recovery and save
some lives.

Twenty communities are putting on the
EMT programs, safety programs, this
spring and summer. They are scattered
across the state.

Normally, EMS is broken up into five
regions. We try to take four or five com-
munities in each region so that we get a
good cross section across the state.

At the central bottom part of the state are,
Emmons, Logan, McIntosh counties.
Those three counties were settled by (it is
part of my background) Russian-Germans
or German-Russians. That area has a
pretty hard-headed group of people. For
years that area of the state has been
known as the "Iron Triangle.”

This is because anything governmental that
comes to that area is going to get rejected,
whether it is economic development or
whether it is EMS. They did get some
EMS programs going down there. We

388

have yet to get a community in those three
counties that is willing to participate in our
farm safety program; we have a waiting list
for the rest of the state to get on the pro-
gram for next year.

The North Dakota Farm Bureau is also
doing one of our farm safety programs.
The Farm Bureau in North Dakota and, I
believe, in the upper Midwest, has a pro-
gram called First Care. They use nurses
and EMT people out in their areas. They
are scattered in all 52 counties in North
Dakota to do a First Care presentation
and first aid training across the state.

We were able to go into their network and
train their First Care trainers in farm safe-
ty to incorporate, in addition to their First
Care Program, a farm safety program.
They were not only doing first aid, First
Care, and First Response training, they
were also doing farm safety training for
their Farm Bureau members. A workbook
was developed from that.

The program was called ABC on the
Farm, Always Be Careful. The program
was targeted at farm children for Safety for
Farm Children. The target audience is the
farm family adults, and the workbook is
generally given to the kids. There are
puzzles on farm safety and a number of
different activities for them to do in this
booklet.

One of our other programs was
co-sponsored by REC, a Rural Electric
Cooperative. We went into 13 schools.
Originally, we targeted six, but we had
thirteen schools request our Farm Safety
Program for Children.

This program is put on for two different

groups—ages K through 3, and grades 4
through 6. It is a 1-hour presentation. It

Papers and Proceedings
is done in the classroom, but put on by
somebody that comes from outside the
school, not their normal grade-school in-
structor. We have completed all 13 pro-
grams in those schools.

The response has been tremendous from
the school administrators, the teachers, and
the parents that were surveyed. We did a
pre-program survey, and we are going back
in to do a post-program survey.

Specifically, we are looking at attitudes of
the parents. What are they allowing their
children to engage in? At what ages do
they think the children should engage in
certain farming activities?

We are also utilizing an occupational nurse
program that was being administered
through a NIOSH grant. The primary
purpose of the occupational nurse program
is to put five nurses in rural areas across
the state.

They will assist in farm surveillance, partic-
ularly looking at farm illnesses: respiratory
illnesses, dermatological conditions, and
toxic exposure to pesticides. These indi-
viduals are also assisting in education ef-
forts across the state. They are represent-
ed at Farm Safety Awareness booths at
local farm programs that are put on in the
wintertime, county fairs, community activi-
ties, folk festivals—that type of thing.

One of the areas we are investigating is
the operator safety checklist, how to rein-
force that.

We looked at hazards of flowing grain in
all of our programs. We use a gravity box
for demonstration with the program pre-
sentation. Particularly for the children, we
show how easily and how quickly one can
become submerged in flowing grain. And

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

Health Education, May 1, 1991

we try to point out particular hazards that
we have seen in our injury reports.

We also review all the EMT Association
and EMS trip tickets. We pull out the
agriculture-related trip tickets to assist in
our surveillance and look at causation.

We look at auger injuries and tractor roll-
overs. Tractor rollovers are still a major
source of fatalities in the state.

Power take-off (PTO) shafts are dangers.
Buildings are dangerous. Children run
across openings, go into a shop where the
tractor is running. The parent is backing
out unaware that the child has come into
the building.

We also are going to our major agriculture
shows across the state and setting up and
staffing a farm safety booth. The winter
show, our biggest agricultural show in
North Dakota, runs about 11 days. Atten-
dance is approximately 130,000 people.
When you only have about 640,000 in the
State, that is a lot of people to attend a
show.

Also, we have cooperated with Centers for
Rural Health and the Dakota Conference
on Rural Health. We are on their pro-
gram schedule and have set up a farm
safety awareness booth. I guess on that
last one, what we have done is seek help
from businesses.

Most of the booths cost a fair amount of
money to set up. Normally the commer-
cial accounts are at these shows. We ap-
proached farm manufacturers in the state
and implement dealers to ask for their
assistance in getting information out on
farm safety. We have got the backing of
the North Dakota Implement Dealers
Association.

389
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

We have had financial assistance in
co-sponsoring some of our farm safety
booths. If we have a sign up with the
name of a particular implement dealer, it
seems that it helps to persuade the farmers
to stop, pick up the information, and talk
to us. It is just a booth display that we
have set up.

As the son of a conservative farmer, one of
the things I know is that government help
is not generally well-accepted in the rural
community and in the agricultural sector.
We have heard people talk about regula-
tion and enforcement, the clause that pro-
hibits OSHA from investigating or doing
any work on farms that employ less than

11 people, which is about 96 percent or 98
percent of the farms.

Even though there is a lot of involvement
in government as far as the farm programs,
there is a very strong resistance out in the
agricultural community to government _
involvement. This is particularly true when
you come in and say, "Well, ’'m from the
government and I’m here to help you."
Right away it turns them off.

We have enjoyed reasonable success. The
focus of our programs is going to continue
along this line in the future. We will be
able to solicit the cooperation of farm
groups, the Farm Bureau, North Dakota
Farmers’ Union, the local EMT squads, by

390

utilizing the local people to do program
presentation. It adds credibility to the
program, adds validity to the program, and
it allows us access.

If I went in saying that I was from the
State Health Department and put on a
presentation similar to what the EMT
squads are doing, we would be lucky if we
got 30 or 40 people there. As I have said,
in some of our communities we have had
200 or 250 people show up. That is more
than they get at a local basketball game, a
big drawing card in the local communities!

I think it is very important, when you are
developing educational programs, to be
able to utilize local resources and local
people to add that credibility. It allows
you to get your foot in the door.

I still go out and do presentations and am
involved with a lot of the programs, but
the programs are mainly sponsored and
put on by local individuals. It has helped
tremendously for our program to be ac-
cepted. We feel that by continuing to
utilize our local resources and our local
farmers, getting them involved, we will be
able to reduce the amount of agricultural
injuries and fatalities in North Dakota.

Eventually, all of our people can continue
to enjoy our beautiful sunrises and our
beautiful sunsets in the state. That is our
primary goal.O

Papers and Proceedings
Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health

FARMSAFE 2000 « A National Coalition for Local Action

Convened by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

April 30 - May 3, 1991, Des Moines, iowa

VOCATIONAL AGRICULTURE
By Robert Graham, M.S.
Assistant Executive Director
National Vocational Agriculture Teachers’ Association

 

Agriculture. Mr. Graham:

 

Dr. Walter J. Armbruster: The next speaker will be Robert Graham, who is the Assistant Executive
Director for the National Vocational Agriculture Teachers’ Association. He will address the inter-
vention for safe behaviors among adults and children from the perspective of Vocational

 

 

First of all, let me say it is a pleasure to be
here in Jowa. I have never been before.

It is quite an experience. It is also a real
pleasure to be at the conference on
FarmSafe 2000.

I am from Louisiana. Has anybody detect-
ed an accent? No? I suppose it did not
show up.

I represent the National Vocational Agri-
culture Teachers’ Association. We are the
folks that are out there in the schools on a
daily basis in this country giving profes-
sional instruction in and about agriculture.
We are the only specifically United States
Department of Education group that is
given the task of teaching agriculture in
the classroom. We had our beginning in
1917 with the Smith-Hughes Act. Right
now we have about 7,000 departments in
the secondary programs.

I will tell you a little bit more about our
staff as we go along.

First I wanted to point out something that
is very important about what we are here
to discuss in promotion of farm safety.
This is an emphatic effort for us to try to
improve the quality of our life.

In order to do that, we study our environ-
ment. We study it so that we can discern
those things that will help us with tech-

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

niques to change our behaviors to have a
safer lifestyle.

This safer lifestyle has been something we
have tried to accomplish in the industrial
world for quite some time. We have been
working toward the same end for many
decades in the rural and farm community.
It is not simply enough that we establish
what behavior or mechanization improves
the safety of our daily environment.

The discoveries of our efforts in research
must be delivered and promoted. That is
what teachers are about: the delivery and
promotion of research development. Only
when safe techniques are utilized as a
common practice is it possible to improve
the quality of life as well as its duration.
We all want a greater duration. I know I

do.

We are in the secondary programs, but
that is not the only place that you will find
us. This teacher, myself, is working with
secondary students.

We also have teachers who are out there
working with young farmers, adults, and
college students. Tomorrow on the pro-
gram you are going to have a gentleman by
the name of Wayne Sprick speak to you.

He is the Executive Director of the Na-
tional Young Farmers’ Association.

397
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

The young farmer and his instructor are
found in junior colleges or community
colleges. We also have them in vocation-
al/technical programs throughout the
country.

Part of what I am going to discuss today is
our premier award. Our premier group is
represented here at this conference by our
National President of the FFA, Mr. Mark
Timm. We are all very proud of Mark.

He represents about 400,000 young people
out there like himself.

One of the things that you need to know
about secondary education is what we are
about—education in all subjects associated
with agricultural science and business. We
start with a basic study in animal science
and plant science in the secondary pro-
gram. Then we try to take 27 areas, insert
proficiency, and enlarge the specific data
base. Every proficiency area has a specific
section that deals with safety practices.

We are all familiar with beef production,
especially here in Iowa. We dedicate safe-
ty study to practice of safe handling
dealing with mechanical and health prob-
lems that may arise from working with
livestock. Teachers are doing this at all of
the levels I previously mentioned.

We utilize this model in order to broaden
the classroom/ laboratory instruction with
a supervised agricultural experience and
then we incorporate the FFA organization
into it.

We try to encourage the involvement of
the community into the classroom. We
encourage young people through the FFA,
in classroom action, and laboratory instruc-
tion at the site, and we branch out into
supervised agricultural experience. We try
to get those experiences in all the areas

392

that I have just mentioned—the 27 profi-
ciency programs.

THE NATIONAL CHAPTER SAFETY
AWARD

Our premier promotion project right now
is the National Chapter Safety Award.
This project is sponsored by the Equip-
ment Manufacturers’ Institute (EMI). We
try to get these 400,000 secondary people
to get involved.

We are trying to branch out into other
areas in the National Young Farmers’
Association, as well as both secondary
schools and community colleges with this
type of promotion activity. It is not
enough simply to teach safety. It is vitally
important that you promote those people
who are out there doing these voluntary
activities so it will be an ongoing and
growing process.

We in agricultural education discovered
this a long time ago. About 25 years ago,
we got hooked up with the EMI and the
National FFA Foundation. We found
money to put on a national competition.

 

The four basic steps are identifying the
need, defining objectives and plans, taking

action, and evaluating the results.

 

We also promote the safety award for
eight objectives: one, to study current
safety activities in the community. The
application is set up so we do that. You
have to know what kind of safety practices
you need. I think our first speaker was
pointing that out to us, evaluating what
you need in the community and then trying
to design plans to deliver that type of

Papers and Proceedings
instruction. Then it will be adopted and
utilized. Create an understanding of safety
in the community.

There is a great lack of understanding by
people who are afraid of being regulated
and having their procedures on the farm
changed by some governmental interven-
tion. One thing for sure, all of us farmers
are a little bit on the hard-headed side.

 

We encourage students to sit down and
do a community review by interviewing
resource people with organizations, such
as the community health organizations,

the district representatives of OSHA and
NIOSH, the Farm Bureaus, and National
Grange Affiliates.

By encouraging members of the FFA to
realize the importance of agriculture safety
in their community, we are all trying to
instill a change in behavior in the young
people; that is a major objective. If you
change the young people’s attitudes to-
wards safety practices, you are going to
change how the occurrence of accidents or
the misuse of chemicals occurs in the
future. They will be more conscious about
the activity around them.

Identifying collaborative groups and joining
forces is another important feature of what
we are here about. That is coalition build-
ing. To try to create and to carry out
successful safety chapter programs, specifi-
cally for our award, we are in the habit of
involving the community.

A PLAN FOR ACTION

In the application itself, we try to get the
teacher and the student to sit down and

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

 

Vocational Agriculture, May 1, 1991

develop the correct approach to analyzing
any situation. The four basic steps are
identifying the need, defining objectives
and plans, taking action, and evaluating
the results.

The last one is very important, evaluating
results. I have heard some discussion by
all the speakers concerning what we are
talking about in this FarmSafe 2000 coali-
tion. When we get through here, how are
we going to come back and evaluate what
we have accomplished one year from now,
two years from now?

identify Needs

It is important that you know and identify
the needs. We encourage students to sit
down and do a community review by inter-
viewing resource people with organizations,
such as the community health organiza-
tions, the district representatives of OSHA
and NIOSH, the Farm Bureaus, and Na-
tional Grange Affiliates. All these people
have other resources you can utilize for
identifying the needs of that community.

Define the Objectives

An example would be in Indiana one year,
they defined their objective at a particular
school as lowering the incidence of traffic
accidents involving 16-to 25-year-olds by 10
percent.

They had a specific goal. It was measur-
able. They could come back and take
statistics that were available through the
health unit and verify whether or not the
effort had lowered the statistics. These are
all things that we look for when we begin
to evaluate the applications for National
Safety Award.

393
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

Take action

Once you have a plan in place, you have to
get it in action. Utilize the people who
helped develop this information by putting
them into the plan. Then you set out to
accomplish the task of lowering the num-
ber of car accidents for persons between
16 and 25 years of age. Do this through
posters, pamphlets, audiovisual aids.

All of these things are suggestions that we
try to put into the packet we send to pro-
mote the utilization on this project. Also,
we tell young people to examine the laws
and regulations. We find that there are a
lot of people in the community who are
unaware of the laws and regulations at
their fingertips to help improve their local
community. We encourage them to first
go to the legal sources. Find the laws and
regulations. See what is on the books that
will help you enforce or help you promote
what you are trying to accomplish.

I would like to encourage everybody to
attend the poster session tomorrow. There
are at least six posters there that have
been done by Gold Emblem Outstanding
Chapters. I think you will get an overview
of what we are trying to do in some 7,700
chapters. That is our goal.

Evaluation

The evaluated results are a critical part, to
see whether or not it has been a successful
project. Is there something more to con-
tinue?

We suggest things such as pre-tests and
post-tests. These are things that can be
actually statistically proved. Survey the
people. Get an opinion survey of what
they perceive the problems were. How do
they perceive, at the completion of the

394

project, what was accomplished? Was
there an actual attitudinal change?

Self-reflection: you have to sit down with
a group of resource people that you have
put together from the community, business,
professions, education, and government.
Have them evaluate. How did you see
what was accomplished? Understand that
this is an annual, ongoing process to try to
comply with.

The evaluation is vitally important. We
have seen a tremendous increase in the
number of chapters since we have started
this project. It is not enough, however.
We started with around 500 chapters par-
ticipating in our programs back in 1972.

We did not collect statistics the first year
we Started. We are up to over 1,600
chapters in the year 1991. That is 1,600
chapters participating out of a possible
7,700 at the secondary level.

We currently do not have an active nation-
al contest for safety at the post-secondary
level. We are beginning to get into the
middle-school level. The potential for
growth and delivery of this information
through our particular promotional process
is immense.

One of the reasons it has not grown more
is because we personally have found flaws
in how we deliver the safety information.
Teachers (and ours are not unlike any
others) have a tremendous number of
activities that they have to tend to ona
daily basis. A lot of these activities are
around that local school site. We found
that if we will develop the materials, and
hand-deliver those materials rather than
mail them in a package, we get better
results.

Papers and Proceedings
PILOT TESTS

The next question is how we do that. We
have come up with a system that we are
going to pilot test around three new pro-
jects. We have broadened our area of
attack. We have gone to agricultural sci-
ence, food safety, and also ground water
quality. We have two new projects. One
was mentioned by Mark, the one about the
food safety development project. It is a
new curriculum project. It is curriculum
for infusion.

As educators and teachers, what that word
means is that, instead of trying to give us
another task to do on top of everything
else, we are trying to supplant something
already being done, or to supplement in-
formation with more current data.

I am going to use ground water quality as
an example. How do we deliver our mate-
rial so that it is utilized and does not end
up as another fantastic piece of material
sitting on a shelf somewhere on which
$300,000 or $400,000 worth of grant money
was spent?

We have designed as a management infor-
mation system. We are going to pilot our
ground water quality project through that
management information system. We are
going to train 40 trainers (master’s degree
or above people), classroom teachers,
college professors who are willing to par-
ticipate.

They will deliver this particular subject
matter on food safety and ground water
quality by conducting 10 workshops directly
to teachers. It will not be open only to
agriculture teachers. It is going to be a
broad system that is open to all teachers of
science, health, safety; even physical educa-

Surgeon General’s Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

Vocational Agriculture, May 1, 1991

tion instructors may find a use for it in
their curriculum.

The object is that people go to a site locat-

ed so that no one instructor would have to

come more than 35 to 40 miles from

school. It is an after-school project. That

way it does not interfere with the normal
ay.

By delivering the actual material into their
hands, with a video to back it up and a
workshop to go with it, it is more likely it
will be utilized. This, in the past, has been
proven by local universities. It works bet-
ter when hand-delivered.

The problem comes in our particular area
of education. Agricultural education is not
one of the required courses. Since the
Nation at Risk reports came out in 1983,
we have had a tremendous amount of
pressure on us, as local educators, to prove
that there is a need for us to be in the
public school system.

CONCLUSION

Once again, I am excited about this partic-
ular conference and the opportunity to
speak and present our particular method
of delivery on farm safety information and
rural community and health education
information. We need you to know that
that light of discrimination is being shined
upon us rather strongly and has been for
some time. In order to expand the pro-
cess, we need to form a tighter and broad-
er coalition to deliver additional informa-
tion on rural health and economic develop-
ment.

I look forward to working with the rest of
the groups that are here. I have enjoyed
what has been said by Dr. Novello and
look forward to proceeding with this coali-

395
Intervention - Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

tion. We can change the risk that is out
there among farm and rural communities.

QUESTIONS

(inaudible): Do you have an example of a pre- or post-test they can use?

Robert Graham: Okay. I will use one from my personal experience. I spent 11-1/2 years in the classroom.
A pre-test that we used in our community had to do with how many actual safety programs the people in our
community had been to and observed in the course of the last 24 months.

We circulated this around the community door-to-door on a Saturday. We put out about 500 of them. We
had drop-offs for them.

We got 300 of them back. It was the local post-office. The postmaster cooperated with us in the rural com-
munity,

We actually checked on how many had been to safety programs dealing with drunken driving and safe
operation of vehicles and farm vehicles on the highway. We got back a little over 300 of them. We evalu-
ated the results and there was a small number. I do not remember the exact number, but about 15 percent
of those had actually been. I know it was under 20 percent. Over the course of the next six months, we
planned four types of seminars. We involved the Farm Bureau Federation, the national and the local health
community, and some Rural Electrification groups that had some promotional films. We did three night
programs and one school program.

Then we went back and surveyed the attendees as to how many of them had received our survey. About 35
percent of those people had actually gotten our forms and turned them in.

It is not an accurate survey of what we did there. We found that out as we went through. We saw an
increase in the number of people who had actually gotten our forms, turned them in, and been to those
programs at that time. There were more of those. It was about 25 percent. We figured about 20 to 25
percent of the population had increased their attendance at a program on education about operation of
vehicles on the highway.

That is not a good example of a pre- and post-test. There are other ways to do it by analyzing the statistics
in your immediate geographic area. What are the accidents? Model your program on one that was done by
a chapter in southern Louisiana dealing with power take-off (PTO) injuries. There was a high rate of these

are the national ones, I am just a local one.

396 Papers and Proceedings
Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health

FARMSAFE 2000 ¢ A National Coalition for Local Action

Convened by the National institute for Occupational Safety and Health

April 30 - May 3, 1991, Des Moines, lowa

THE MASS MEDIA AND AGRICULTURE

By Cheryl Tevis, M.A.
Senior Farm Issue Editor
Successful Farming Magazine

 

I am glad to be here this afternoon and to
have the opportunity to share some
thoughts with you about farm safety and
health. I am the Farm Issues Editor at
Successful Farming Magazine. Successful
Farming is a national farm magazine with
500,000 subscribers. It is based here in
Des Moines.

We are published by Meredith Corpora-
tion, which also publishes Better Homes
and Gardens, Midwest Living, Ladies’ Home
Journal, Metropolitan Home and several
other magazines. I have written for Suc-
cessful Farming for 12 years.

I did grow up on a farm in northwest Iowa,
near Sioux City. Like many farm teenag-
ers, I left the farm when I graduated from
high school. I did not know what my col-
lege major would be. I was pretty certain,
however, that my life’s work would not be
related to farming at all.

Somehow, as part of the requirements for
completing my master’s degree in Journal-
ism at the University of Missouri at Co-
lumbia, I wrote a series of articles about
agriculture. That led to a decision to
specialize in agricultural writing.

I worked at a farm magazine in Milwaukee
for three-and-a-half years before coming to
Successful Farming. Then, almost 7 years
ago, I completed my 360-degree revolution
by marrying an Iowa grain and hog farmer.
Although my life has taken a somewhat
circuitous route, I am a farmer’s daughter

Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

writing for a farm magazine and married
to a farmer. That is my background.

I have been asked today to talk about the
media’s role in helping to promote farm
safety and health. Obviously, I can not
speak for the entire media. My personal
experience is with farm magazines and,
most specifically, with Successful Farming.
I will concentrate on that.

For years the general public has perceived
that the farm is a great place to live and
raise a family. In many ways that is true.
For those of us who have lived on farms or
in farm communities, farm health and
safety always have been concerns. I am
proud that Successful Farming has taken
the lead in covering many of these topics
and that my involvement with farm health
and safety issues is not an overnight devel-
opment.

For instance, in the late 1970’s, I
remember writing about farmer’s lung
disease and the work being done at what is
now the National Farm Medicine Center,
to help afflicted farmers. Successful Farm-
ing also had an early focus on the effects
of stress on farmers. I wrote a story on
this subject back in October of 1980. My
stories about disabled farmers began in
1981. I wrote about microsurgery follow-
ing a farmer accident in 1983.

At about the same time, we had an editor

who was a fitness advocate. With his en-
couragement, I wrote an article called

397
Intervention ~ Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

"Being a Farmer Does not Make you Fit
and Trim." In those days it was something
that you did not think about. Naturally,
farmers are supposed to be in good health
and good physical condition. We felt that
there were some areas there to work on as
well.

In December of 1981, I edited an article
by Kelley Donham, at the University of
Iowa’s Institute of Agricultural Medicine
and Occupational Health. It was entitled,
"Farming Can be Hazardous to Your
Health." A year or so later, I worked with
Kelley again to write a sidebar about farm-
er’s lung, pesticide poisoning, respiratory
illness, well-water contamination, and toxic
fumes poisoning.

In March of 1984, Successful Farming be-
came the first farm magazine to feature a
regular rural health page. Today I think
this feature still does distinguish our maga-
zine from others. We have covered topics
from skin cancer, to fitness, to hog farm-
er’s lung, to histoplasmosis. More recently,
we have featured occasional articles about
non-farm related illnesses and conditions
such as lupus, infertility, and Lyme disease.
It is our belief that farmers do not receive
many magazines that deal specifically with
health issues. Yet they are interested in
reading about it.

The safety of farm children has become a
personal and professional issue of mine.

In 1983, I wrote a story about the death of
a 17-month-old girl in a farm accident.
Soon afterwards I married a farmer and, in
1986, our daughter was born. I found my-
self coming back, both for professional and
personal reasons, to the topics of children
and farm safety and farm-related health
hazards.

398

Farm children have been injured and
killed for years. I was too young to remem-
ber a tragic tractor roll-over accident that
claimed the life of our neighbor’s son.
Years later I remember finding the yel-
lowed and brittle newspaper articles about
it that my mother had saved. On looking
back, I think that that accident may have
had a lot to do with the fact that my broth-
ers were not expected to function as hired
hands at a young age.

Despite the fact that children have been
the victims of farm accidents for years, the
issue of children and farm accidents was
not a hot topic. In fact, my 1983 article
about Bill and Ann Friend’s daughter was
unusual for farm magazines. I have to give
Bill Field, at Purdue University Extension,
a safety specialist, most of the credit for
bringing this tragic situation concerning
children to my attention. I think he took
the leadership in tracking injuries and
deaths of farm children.

Since that first article, I have found that
focusing on children is a way to get at the
complacency factor among adults concern-
ing farm safety. Initially, my editor was
not excited about writing safety articles.
After all, he pointed out, people feel that
they already are safety conscious. They
have their own mind set about it and it is
difficult to engage them on that topic.

By taking steps to reduce or eliminate
safety hazards on the farm for the sake of
their children, in many cases adults also
are protecting their own lives. It helps to
penetrate that adult mind set and get them
to at least think about safety.

Therefore, three years ago I prepared a
one-page story featuring an Earlham, Iowa,
farm woman, Marilyn Adams. I was
moved by the death of her young son,

Papers and Proceedings
Keith, in a gravity flow grain wagon and by
her efforts to do something to try to spare
other farm families the grief that this acci-
dent had caused her. Just before the arti-
cle was to go to press, I found out that we
had a commercial sponsor, DowElanco,
who was willing to provide enough adver-
tising to allow expansion of that topic from
one to twelve pages. I was elated.

The article, "We Kill Too Many Farm
Kids," contained original research. Here is
a copy of it. I have copies of this article as
well as other ones that we have done up
here in the front for you to take with you
today. This article had original research
that was based on our 1,200-member farm
panel, concerning farm safety attitudes and
practices.

For instance, we found that 65 percent of
farm boys were driving tractors without
supervision by age 12 years. According to
our survey, more than 70 percent of farm
parents believe that the risk of a child
riding as a passenger on a tractor is low,
very low. More than 85 percent allow
their children under age 9 to ride.

The response to this article has been
gratifying. With the assistance of Marilyn
Adams and her organization, Farm Safety
for Just Kids, we estimate that more than
20,000 copies of the insert have been dis-
tributed.

The article has been reprinted twice since
its publication. It has enjoyed widespread
distribution to 4-H clubs, farm families,
FFA, and extension safety specialists.

A video based on our 12-page editorial
was produced, again with the sponsorship
of DowElanco and the distribution by
Farm Safety for Just Kids. More than 2,000

Surgeon General's Conference on Agricultural Safety and Health - 1991

The Mass Media and Agriculture, May 1, 1991

copies of the video have been distributed
in the past two years.

In addition, FFA chapters, churches, hospi-
tals, 4-Her’s, and farm men and women
have written or called to tell us about their
efforts to take the information in the story
and the video one step further.

Two years later we are still receiving re-
quests for this article. As a result, in mid-
March of 1991, we published a five-page
follow-up featuring many of these ideas,
events, educational efforts, and projects.
We want to provide information and guid-
elines to others so that they can plan and
conduct events as well.

This is the five-page insert that we did with
ideas and projects and things that can be
done on a community basis to improve
farm safety, specifically for children. Last
year, "We Kill Too Many Farm Kids" was
selected as a finalist in the category, per-
sonal service, of the National Magazine
Awards.

In 1990, sponsorship again provided Suc-
cessful Farming the opportunity to publish
a 12-page story called, "Staying Alive: The
Struggle to Save Farm Accident Victims."
It focused on near-fatal farm accidents told
from the perspective of the farmers who
had survived them, and provided vital in-
formation about what steps individuals can
take to improve the quality of rural emer-
gency rescue in their communities. The
article also featured examples of what
communities are undertaking to improve
their emergency rescue skills.

As you have heard today, about 75 percent
of the rural emergency medical services in
the U.S. are comprised of volunteers.

Many victims of farm accidents are not
discovered for hours or have to travel

399
Intervention ~ Safe Behaviors Among Adults and Children

miles to the nearest hospital without first
aid. Since 1981, 190 rural hospitals have
closed their doors. It is estimated that 22
percent of hospitals in rural America are
at serious risk of closing. The medical
attention that farm families receive at that
accident scene is more vital today than
ever before.

Last fall we offered the Institute for
Agricultural Medicine and Occupational
Health access to our farm panel for further
research into farm accidents. We found
that proper shielding is not placed on
power take-offs (PTO’s) on 64 percent of
the farms. Only 64 percent of farm chil-
dren use seat belts in farm pick-up trucks.
When parents were asked to select the
factors used to determine when their chil-
dren were old enough to drive a tractor, 48
percent replied that they or other children
in their family drove at that age.

Economic factors also ranked high. A
total of 31 percent in the Iowa group sur-
veyed said one reason for the decision to
let their child drive was that extra help was
needed. Another 21 percent said that the
kids", wanted to do it."

When asked, "If cost were not a consider-
ation, would you use roll-over protection?"
89 percent said they would; 96 percent
would use safety shielding; and 50 percent
would use day care. These figures may be
slightly high. We all know it is good to
have good intentions. Most of this group,
92 percent, said they know that tractors
and other machinery are the largest source
of accidents involving children. Many of
the safety recommendations buck tradition,
values, and economic needs on farms.

We featured the results of this study along

with an article about the farm family safety
walk-about program developed by the

400

Institute of Agricultural Medicine and
Occupational Health. We contributed
funding and featured an article last year
about the farm safety day camps for kids,
pioneered at a hospital in Cedar Falls,
Iowa.

Living on a farm 60 miles from Des
Moines, I frequently see and hear about
farm neighbors and relatives who exhibit a
casual disregard for dangerous situations
involving children. Child care is a crucial
problem. A survey of 1,500 Minnesota
farm women reinforces the fact that find-
ing affordable, quality child care in rural .
areas is difficult. Of these women sur-
veyed who are employed off-farm, 44 per-
cent use child care.

Even women who do not work off-farm, in
that survey said that they needed child
care options to allow them to accomplish
their farm work. Being married to a farm-
er and being the mother of a four-year-old,
I understand the problems of keeping
children safe while growing up on the
farm. I have child care arrangements for
our daughter.

Occasionally, as any other parent in that
situation knows, arrangements do fall
through. Many times it is hard to even get
a high-school babysitter in the evenings in
rural communities.

Sometimes I have to fall back on my moth-
er-in-law. That creates concern on my
part. She is usually involved in the field
work or the hog chores. Fortunately, my
husband shares my view that a tractor cab
is no place to babysit children and a far-
rowing house is not a play area.

On the other hand, I see the dangers of

never allowing our daughter to venture
under supervision beyond the house yard.

Papers and Proceedings