The nature of agriculture creates a number of areas of activity in the workplace that can be inherently more risky than similar activities performed in an office or factory environment.
Working hours
The length of hours someone works on a farm is typically considerably longer than those generated by someone else who works. The nature of the work means that it has to be done with a speed and intensity that extends over many hours. It is not uncommon for people who work on a farm to spend between 60 and 80 hours a week working. If someone is also a farm owner, they will see this not so much as a job but also as an investment in their family life.
Management
On a farm, there is no traditional division between management and labor that normally exists in a company. This means that there is often no clear management focus on issues affecting health and safety, and there is a greater tendency to blur the lines that can result in a higher risk factor, which must be managed by all operations. .
Work rhythm and routine
With most jobs, there is some degree of stability in terms of some kind of routine and steady pace of work, although this can often be marked by extremely busy periods. Farm work is quite different, as very often there is no routine at all and the pace can vary from very slow to very fast.
The routine on a farm will vary, depending on the season, the work that needs to be done, the weather, and the number of personnel available to work. Many farms employ seasonal workers, often for specific types of jobs such as grape picking or corn picking. Much of the work is only done at certain times of the year, often only once or twice a year.
This means that people who work on a farm full time do not accumulate the different continuous levels of experience that they need and would normally get other types of work.
Both things, the rhythm and routine of work, can generate a degree of uncertainty and instability, manageable from a work point of view, but which by its very nature makes the work more dangerous and increases the risk of injury. and harm to people.
Training
Farming doesn’t really have any formal training as such, most of the learning is done on the job. This was true for many industries until very recently, but for many of them this has changed considerably in recent times, and training is now seen as something that must be formally delivered in addition to the day-to-day nature of the job. .
This means that formal training in areas such as safety, fire prevention, manual handling, and the like is delivered in a classroom-like setting, and is typically supported by a series of policies and procedures.
Agriculture does not do this. There may be people working in the agricultural industry who have university degrees in different aspects of agriculture and horticulture, but other than that, there will be little formal training. This means that there is little structural context for health, safety and risk management, and it is left to individual farms and farm owners to ensure that best practices are produced in the workplace.
Technology
Technology is rapidly changing the way farming is done, from the advent of driverless tractors to the use of drones, specific weather forecasting, and all kinds of robotic animal feeding. This use of technology brings with it additional risks, both in terms of the use of the technology itself, as well as the law of unforeseen consequences, as well as the need for it to be managed in a business context, an adequate risk assessment of its benefits and risks, and how their misuse could be seriously harmful.
It is really important in all types of technology, as with a lot of farm and farm machinery, that the people who use it have an age appropriate level of skill and, where possible, receive formal training, possibly online , to ensure that they use it in a safe and appropriate manner.