Harry Siemens –   From 1990 to 2012, there were 2,324 agriculture-related fatalities in Canada. An average of 101 deaths each year. During the first 12 years of the surveillance period (1990-2001) on average 116 deaths each year. During the last 11 years (2002-2012) the average number of fatalities dropped to 85 each year.

Glen Blahey, the Health and Safety Specialist for the Canadian Agricultural Association, said every so often when he starts talking about safety whether one on one or Twitter as is the case for the basis of this story, someone will push back and say oh, regulations are terrible.

“That’s far too much to keep up with, and I don’t have the time, etcetera, etcetera.  It was chewing away at me,” said Blahey. “I thought well, okay. How many farmers operate their farms just to get by. Or don’t care about their efficiency, they don’t care about their yields, they don’t care about their productivity, they just farm to get by. How many producers are there like that in Canada?”

He said there used to be some, but today there are none. Occupational Safety and Health legislation, Safety, and health standards are minimum performance criteria.

“This is the minimum you should be doing to protect the people that work in your operation, including yourself,” Blahey said. “My question to the producers is if you’re going to farm and reach maximum productivity, maximum efficiency, why would you only invest a minimum effort to protect the people that are involved in your operation?”

One farmer questioned him about the cost and making sure those writing the regulations and then getting the government to implement them must know the reason for doing so.

“Right. Cost is a factor, but the bottom line on health and safety is making sure that you know what you’re working with, and that the people that are working with that piece of equipment, that chemical that animal, are properly trained and understand how to control the potential hazards to them. That’s the bottom line. Know what you’re doing,” Blahey said. “A joke sometimes used where a farmer is reluctant to give his $50,000 pickup truck to his son when he gets his driver’s license to let him take it to town by himself. But the farmer thinks nothing of putting his 14-year-old son on a $250,000 combine and leaving him alone in the field for several hours.”

From his perspective as a safety geek, it’s a matter of looking at it reasonably and responsibly. “What’s the point – Rain is coming, so you’re gonna bust your butt, and you’re gonna try and get out there, and get the maximum amount of crop taken off because you don’t want a lower grade on it. If you’re dead, or if you’re in the hospital with broken bones and missing limbs, what value is that crop in the bin,” he said. “Taking it to a more personal level, most farmers look at their children as the future of the farm, but yet, in many cases … and we see that on a regular basis, where they sacrifice their children because it’s, I want them to experience what farming is about.”

Blahey wants producers to stop and think for a minute. Doing this Health and Safety thing is not to make me happy. It’s not to make some regulator happy and keep them away. It’s not to keep some politician satisfied in the limestone palace on Broadway. It’s to make sure that, at the end of the day, you go home to your family in one piece, and all your family sits at the dinner As mentioned earlier, overall across Canada, there’s a downward trend regarding fatalities in the agricultural sector. A reporter for a national newspaper looking at injury and death trends across all the indust...