Agricultural injuries in Iowa and Missouri in 2009

Farm demographics are changing. According to the 2007 Ag Census, traditional mid-sized family farms are decreasing and the largest increases were within the 1 to 9 and 10 to 49 acre farms. The number of farms with less than $2,500 income rose 77% from 1997 to 2007 while the number of farms with income of $50,000 to $99,999 declined by the same percentage. On the other hand, large family and corporate farms produce an increasing share of agricultural commodities. These demographic changes raise the question if there is the need to refocus the agricultural health and safety efforts to reflect the growing number of non-traditional farms. We aimed to find out how the injury rates differ between various demographic groups, particularly among non-traditional part-time operations. We developed a survey, administered by National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) in Iowa and Missouri in 2010, asking questions about injuries that occurred to farm family members and workers. The survey data were linked with existing data from the 2007 Ag Census. A total of 857 farms responded (rate 41.3%); 444 in Iowa and 413 in Missouri. About 52% of principal farm operators listed farming as their main occupation. The data included 1287 farm operators, 500 employees, and 360 children less than 20 years of age. The injury rate was 7.8% among farm operators, 4.8% among hired workers, and 5.3% among children/youth. Injury rates were highest among 20-39 year old operators (rate 23%); and operators who received 60-79% of their household income from farming (rate 21%). Full-time farmers had a higher injury rate than part-time farmers. However, even those with >200 annual off-farm workdays had a 6.5% farm injury rate, which indicates that part-time farmers are at high risk of injury when adjusted for farm work exposure hours.