For those of us working in agriculture it can be easy to forget the risks we take everyday on the job. And not just the gamble with weather each year, choosing what crops to produce, or animals to raise. Statistically, our industry is one of the more dangerous to work in. According to the National Safety Council, agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting experienced the highest death rate per 100,000 workers in the most recent data from 2022! And we all know the injury rate is just as high.
Many metrics measure danger, from work-related injury and illness, to fatality frequency or volume. Of course statistics are just numbers quantifying circumstances that we all usually think “won’t happen to us” – which unfortunately just isn’t isn’t necessarily true. Unavoidable legitimate accidents DO happen, and working in an industry with more exposure to risk than most, means that training and focus on safe practices is essential to making sure we get home to our families every night.
I have personal connections to more than one serious farm accident from this harvest season alone, and it makes you sick to your stomach when you hear what happened.
As an organization, Oregon Aglink has focused on keeping safety at the forefront, providing resources for members and non-members alike. We’ve worked with farm safety consultants over the years to create training DVDs (now available via YouTube), facilitate small farm group meeting trainings, and most recently produced bilingual English-Spanish posters for hazelnut harvest, forklift, and ATV use. Our next project will focus on a collection of podcast episodes to aid farms and ranches in creating cultures of safety – true stories from farm accidents around the state, and actionable ways to take preventative measures and/or brush up on safety skills all in a short, digestible audio format for employers and employees both.
Most of our safety work has been thanks to a long-standing partnership with SAIF. Not only have they helped subsidize our work with safety consultants, it is through them that qualifying members can receive a discount on their Workers Comp premium. To qualify, policyholders must meet the criteria set by SAIF including things like having an earned or unearned experience rating 1.00 or less, and a group history period incurred to manual loss ratio less than 40 percent. This discount rewards safe operations; the current discount is 11% off premiums through June 30, 2025.
Every operation wants to be safe, but sometimes it’s easy to get complacent in the off-season, or with something we’ve done a million times, or simply rush in the depths of harvest. As cliche as it sounds, it’s so important to slow down, be aware, and be intentional when working in agriculture – because no task is worth losing life or limb over.
Kathy Hadley
Oregon Aglink President