farm-work hazard prevention efforts by school-based agricultural education instructors

American Journal of Industrial Medicine 28565477 (1995)

Farm-Work Hazard Prevention Efforts by School-Based Agricultural Education Instructors

Larry J. Chapman, PhD, Ronald T. Schuler, PhD, PE, Terry L. Wilkinson, PhD, and Cheryl A. Skjolaas, 6s

Objective: To assess current prevention efforts, we examined agricultural work-related safety and health activities by school-based agricultural education instructors in Wis- consin. Methods: Questionnaires were administered to 284 high school agricultural education instructors. Results: Instructors taught agricultural safety and health to 61.5 students during 20.4 hours during the previous year. Extension agents were used most often as resources during preparation and presentation of coursework. Only a minority of instructors (13.6%) agreed that modifying the work to eliminate hazards should be emphasized over training people to work safely around hazards. After issues of time pressures and lack of student interest, the most important problems the instructors felt they faced were the needs for materials and other resources. Conclusion: Safety education alone is unlikely to reduce injuries unless unsafe conditions are modified. In- structors need to emphasize teaching of skills in hazard recognition, identification, and control. Instructors felt they could be more effective with better materials and more time for injury and disease prevention. 0 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Key words: agricultural education, child labor, childhood injury, farming, injury control, occupational health, rural health, rural populations, vocational agriculture

INTRODUCTION

Work in production agriculture is extremely hazardous compared to most industries [NIOSH, 1993; Etherton et al., 1991; Bell et al., 19901, especially for adolescent workers. Children and youth under 18 are believed to account for a disproportionate share of the fatal and disabling injuries in production agriculture [Heyer et al., 19921. Nationwide estimates suggest that 23,500 children and adolescents suffer nonfatal farm-related injuries each year and that 300 die [Rivara, 19851. The fatality rate increases with the age of the child, and the rate for 15- to 19-year-old boys is double that of young children. As is typical of adult farm injuries, tractors and farm machinery are the most common causes [Rivara, 1985; Castillo et al., 19941. A

Neurology Department, University of Wisconsin Medical School (L.J.C.). Agricultural Engineering Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison (L.J.C., R.T.S., C.A.S.). Safety and Health Extension, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV (T.L. W.). Address reprint requests to Larry Chapman, UW Agricultural Engineering Department, 460 Henry Mall, Madison, WI 53706. Accepted for publication November 21, 1994.

0 1995 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

566 Chapman et al.

study of tractor fatalities reported that 29% involved children aged 19 or younger [Karlson and Noren, 19791.

There are few age restrictions on work in production agriculture by minors. Farm youth are routinely exposed to work hazards at an early age. Children can legally work on the family farm at any age, at any time, and in any occupation, including work declared to be hazardous [Castillo et al., 1994; U.S. Department of Labor, 19901. Parents of farm youth have reported that they do not consider children capable of operating tractors safely until age 15 but that they commonly allow the children on their family farms to begin operating tractors and machinery much earlier, at about 10-12 years of age [Hawk et al., 19911.

Paid employment of minors on operations other than their parent’s farm is regulated by the Fair Labor Standards Act [Wilk, 1993; Murphy, 1992; U.S. De- partment of Labor, 19901. Minors younger than 12 can legally be employed outside school hours in nonhazardous activities (as defined by the federal Hazardous Occu- pations Order for Agriculture) on a small farm with the written consent of their parent [Wilk, 1993; U.S. Hazardous Occupations Order for Agriculture, 1991; U.S. De- partment of Labor, 19901. The order also specifies that youth must be at least 14 to operate tractors and machinery as hired farm employees, and those under 16 must have completed a tractor and machinery safety certification course.

Most agricultural education instructors work in general or comprehensive high schools. Others are based in vocational schools, including 2-year post-secondary technical centers [National Research Council, 19881. Most train youth for work in agricultural industries and services. Their agricultural education programs usually emphasize production agriculture occupations and include classroom and laboratory instruction, a supervised occupational experience, and participation in the National Future Farmers of America (FFA) organization, an extracurricular student group. Agricultural education instructors address work safety to some degree in their course offerings. In many states, agricultural education instructors collaborate without pay- ment with county Cooperative Extension agents to teach the tractor and machinery safety certification course required of farm youth aged 14-15 working in production agriculture.

School-based agricultural education is a profession in transition. Since the U.S. farm population has decreased from 33% of the general population in 1917 to near 2% today [National Research Council, 1988; U.S. Department of Agriculture, 19911, production agriculture no longer represents the major proportion of jobs in the total agricultural industry [National Research Council, 19881. The economic crisis in fanning during the 1980s exacerbated trends toward fewer farms, larger operations, and fewer jobs. The range of agricultural occupations has broadened to include marketing and financial services, food processing and distribution, agricultural supply and service industries, and land, water, and recreational resources. Until the 1980s, however, the content of most high school agricultural education programs focused on production agriculture, despite its limited and generally shrinking role in the job market.

The smaller production agriculture work force, combined with fewer high school students nationwide, produced a prolonged decline in vocational agricultural enrollments throughout the 1980s that has only recently begun to stabilize [National FFA Organization, 19861. A 1983 report on school reform entitled “A Nation At Risk” and a later report from the Committee on Agricultural Education of the Na-

Agricultural Educators and Farm Hazards 567

tional Research Council helped prompt a period of reappraisal and rebuilding [U.S. Department of Education, 1983; National Research Council, 19881. Many agricultural education instructors, especially those in urban districts, began to develop new course offerings outside the production agriculture topic area. They also reoriented their programs in other ways to better attract and meet the needs of students who did not live on farms or had no interest in a production agriculture career. These “non- farm’ ’ students make up the majority in many agricultural education classrooms today [National Research Council, 19881.

The agricultural health promotion experience in Wisconsin should have rele- vance for other states. Most states in the United States share the basic elements found in Wisconsin’s public health, education, and other governmental infrastructures that serve small business production agriculture (extension agents, public health nurses, agricultural education instructors) [James and Langley, 199 1 ; Institute of Medicine, 1988; Camp, 19871. Wisconsin’s sole proprietorshipfamily farm ownership patterns and the proportion of production agriculture in the state’s economy conform closely to national averages [U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1989; Ahearn et al., 19881. The crops and livestock, operation sizes, and seasonal patterns of work activities in Wisconsin’s agricultural sector best approximate those found in the nation’s traditional agricultural regions in the Midwest, Northeast, and South [U.S. Department of Agriculture, 19891.

There is limited information about agricultural health and safety-related activities conducted by agricultural education instructors. We administered questionnaires to all high school-based agricultural education instructors in Wisconsin to investigate their formalized efforts relevant to health and hazards in agricultural work.

METHODS AND MATERIALS Subjects

The questionnaire target group consisted of all the agricultural education instructors at secondary schools in Wisconsin. A mailing list of 284 such high school instructors was obtained from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Questionnaire and Administration The University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Agricultural Engineering Department

developed a set of questions and solicited comments from Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction professional staff. The purpose of administering the questionnaire was to determine what percent of the instructors were participating in any safety and health activities and the number of hours per year they spent on them. Second, we wanted to know what proportion of that time was spent doing face-to-face classroom teaching compared to preparation work and other activities. We wanted to know what types of outside resource people the instructors involved. We also wanted to inventory instructor preferences for new materials, resource people, and information about particular safety and health topics. Finally, we were interested in what instructors saw as barriers to improvements in injury and disease prevention efforts and with what recommended self-protection safety practices they complied.

The questionnaire was administered using the Dillman mail survey method [Dillman, 1978, 19911. Cover letters were personally addressed to each agricultural educator and individually signed. The cover letters emphasized the social utility of the

568 Chapman et al.

questionnaire, the importance of each respondent completing the questionnaire, and the privacy protection afforded to returned questionnaires. After the initial questionnaire mailing was completed, a schedule of follow-up mail contacts to nonrespon- dents was conducted over the next 4 weeks according to published survey method recommendations [Dillman, 1978, 19911. The protocol was approved by the Univer- sity of Wisconsin College of Agricultural and Life Sciences human subjects committee. The time needed to complete the questionnaire was estimated to be 20-30 minutes.

Analysis Data entry and analysis were conducted using EpiInfo, a noncommercial, gen-

eral purpose data base management and statistics program [Dean et al., 19911. All agricultural education instructors in the state were surveyed, so the study was a census and not a sample. A number of questions required instructors to rank their top three responses in order of importance. Rankings were calculated by giving first-choice responses triple weight, second choices double weight, and third choices single weight before calculating an average score for each response, which was then scaled to a possible total of 100 for all responses to the question.

RESULTS Demographics and Activities

Of 284 instructors contacted by mail, 193 returned usable questionnaires (68% response rate j. Three questionnaires were received that were not sufficiently completed to be useful. One instructor was newly hired and unable to complete the questionnaire.

As a group, the school-based agricultural education instructors were largely male (87.5%) with a mean age of 38 years (SD = 8.6). Most had been teaching for more than 10 years (Mn = 12.0 years, SD = 8.3). In the last year they delivered farm safety and health programming to an average of 61.5 students (SD = 46.5) and spent an average of 20.4 hr (SD = 22.5) on farm safety and health activities. The data analysis failed to reveal any relationship between years of teaching and the number of hours spent on farm safety and health activities.

Classroom teaching was the major agricultural health and safety-related activity for agricultural education instructors (Table I). Combined with laboratory-based instruction, the two activities accounted for 69% of the time devoted to agricultural occupational health undertakings. On-site visits and hazard inspections, attending continuing education offerings, and conducting safety-related public events each accounted for less than 5% of the time spent in the previous year.

The agricultural education instructors were also asked how they would spend a hypothetical increase in their budget for agricultural health and safety activities (Table I). The majority of this new money was apportioned to classroom and laboratory instruction. Smaller amounts were set aside for hazard inspections and for safety- related fairs, camps, and other public events.

Instruction Topics The instructors ranked the top three instruction topics covered in the previous

year (Table 11). Teaching about safe behavior when operating farm tractors was


TABLE I. How Secondary School Instructors Apportioned Time Spent on Agricultural Safety and Health in the Previous Year and Plans for a Hypothetical Budget Increase

Distribution of Activity Last year (%) budget increase (%)

Classroom teaching 49.2 32.1

Self study or keeping up through reading, etc. 9.9 7.6 Assisting others doing programs 6.9 5.2 Conducting on-site visits and hazard inspections 4.9 11.8 Attending continuing education training 3.1 8.2 Conducting a fair, camp, or public event 2.8 10.5 Other" 3.6 2.4

Laboratory teaching 19.6 22.2

"Other for current programming includes: teaching tractor and machinery certification class (3), presentations (2), National Farm Medicine Center health screening (2). Other for hypothetical budget includes: purchasing videos (2), purchasing laboratory safety items (2).

ranked first, followed by teaching about safe work behavior around farm implements, and agricultural chemical safety. When the instructors were asked which topics they would like to know more about, they expressed greatest interest in emergency preparedness, injury statistics, and agricultural chemical safety (Table 11). In every instance when choices were available, agricultural education instructors chose training people to work safely around hazards rather than training in how to correct hazards.

Resource People and Materials Extension agents were the resource people whom agricultural education instruc-

tors were most likely to contact when they prepared and presented agricultural safety coursework in the previous year (Table 111). More than half of the school-based agricultural education instructors reported working with extension agents in the previous year. Agricultural implement dealers, farmers, emergency medical services personnel, and staff from the National Farm Medicine Center in Marshfield, Wis- consin were used in the previous year by one quarter to one third of the instructors. They expressed the greatest interest in learning more about resource people available from emergency medical services and the National Farm Medicine Center. The school-based agricultural education instructors reported little use of or interest in bankers or insurance agents as resource people.

Videotapes were clearly the new item most instructors felt would be useful (Table IV) . They ranked presentation packages, demonstrations, and presentation overheads as their next three choices of new materials they would like to acquire. Inspection checklist forms for use by students to identify correctable farm hazards ranked fifth. Instructors expressed little interest in a newsletter or short magazine articles. They expressed the least interest in buyers' guides listing safety features in commercially available farm equipment.

Knowledge and Self-Protective Practices A minority of instructors (13.6%) agreed that engineering controls to correct

hazards should be emphasized over training people to work safely around hazards (Table V). About 3 in 10 instructors were aware that although the total numbers of

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TABLE 11. Coverage in Previous Year and Future Interest in Instruction Topics in Survey of 193 (of 284) Secondarv School Instructors in Wisconsin

Rank" of importance among Want more Instructional area topics covered previous yr information about (%)

Tractor-safe behavior Implements-safe behavior Agricultural chemical safety Farmstead equipment-safe behavior Personal protective equipment Livestock handling-safe behavior Tractors-correcting hazards Farm fatality, injury, and illness data Emergency preparedness Implements-correcting hazards Farmstead equipment-correcting hazards Building ventilation and air quality Livestock handling-correcting hazards Optimal work postures and positions/ergonomics Farmstead structures-safe behavior Farmstead structures-correcting hazards None Otherb

34.1 14.0 13.0 6.4 6.0 5.8 5.6 4.5 3.0 1.9 1.1 0.9 0.4 0.3 0.3 0 0 2.7

17.6 16.0 31.4 18.1 25.5 21.7 14.4 35.6 36.2 12.2 17.0 28.2 20.7 16.0 20.2 17.0 2.2 6.5

aRank of 100 point total where first choice is given triple weight, second choice double weight, and third choice single weight. hother includes forestry, chain saws, hunting safety, recreational vehicles, tool use, hearing, and skin cancer.

TABLE 111. Types of Resource People and Interest in Knowing More About Them: 193 Responders to Questionnaire Survey of Secondary School Agricultural Instructors

Resource person Used previous year (%) about (%)

Extension agents 52.4 15.3 Agricultural implement dealer 32.8 14.3 Active or retired farmers 30.7 16.4

National Farm Medicine Center staff 24.9 29.1 Feed, seed, fertilizer, or pesticide suppliers 19.6 18.0 Public health personnel 15.3 14.3 Local physicians or other health care providers 14.3 14.3 None 11.2 5.9 Insurance agents and bankers 8.5 12.7 Other 6.4 2.7

Other includes local law enforcement personnel (2), Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources staff (2), Wisconsin Farm Bureau staff (3), school nurse (2).

Want to know

Emergency medical service personnel 26.5 21.2

fatal injuries had declined in Wisconsin each year, the farm-related injury fatality rate had remained essentially unchanged when shrinkage in the production agriculture workforce was taken into account. Less than one educator in 20 correctly recognized that motor vehicle crashes, not farm-related injuries or home injuries, caused the greatest numbers of injury fatalities among farmers and farm residents.

When asked about adoption of safety practices, 40% of instructors claimed to


TABLE IV. Rankings of New Items That Would Be Most Useful by 193 Wisconsin Secondary School Agricultural Instructors

Resource (of 100 point total)

Videotapes 29.2 Leader training packets for educator presentations 14.7 Safety demonstrations for educators to use 13.9

Agricultural educator rank

Sets of overheads for educator safety presentations Safety inspection checklist for hornelfam Short fact sheets More extension safety bulletins

8.1 1 .3 5.5 5.4

Resource directory 5.0 A monthly safety tip 4.6 A health and safety newsletter 2.6

Buyer’s guides for farm equipment safety features 0.7 Other 0.9

Short safety magazine articles 2.1

TABLE V. Self-Reports of Knowledge and Protective Practices by Wisconsin Secondary School Agricultural Instructors

Knowledge Permanent hazard correction better than training in safe use Wisconsin injury fatality rate has been essentially unchanged Motor vehicles ace major cause of farm resident injuries and

fatalities Protective Practices

Wear hearing protectors around operating field machinery Wear hat (other than baseball cap) to protect against sun Refuse to be an extra rider on a tractor Refuse to take extra riders when driving a tractor Inspected school agricultural education laboratory for hazards

in previous year

Correct responses (%)

13.6 21.4 4.7

40.1 33.3 38.8 26.6 87.0

wear hearing protection when working around operating field machinery, and nearly as large a percentage availed themselves of headgear adequate to provide sun protection. More instructors refused to be extra riders on tractors (38.8%) than refused to allow others to extra ride (26.6%). Most of the instructors (69%) reported that they had a school laboratory that students used, and 87% of these instructors reported that the laboratory had been inspected at least once during the previous year for safety and health hazards. There were no knowledge or safety practice questions that statistically differentiated the most senior (15-35 years experience) from the least senior (< 7 years) thirds of the instructor group.

Barriers Agricultural education instructors ranked the numerous competing demands on

their time as the top obstacle to better farm safety instruction (Table VI). The instructors ranked ‘‘students are not interested in safety programs” and a perceived “lack of adequate safety and health materials” as the second and third most important barriers. Instructors did not feel that farm safety efforts were suffering because

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TABLE VI. Rankings of Barriers to Better Farm Safety Instruction by Wisconsin Secondary School Agricultural Instructors

Barrier (of 100 point total)

Instructors have too many demands on time Students are not interested in safety programs Instructors lack adequate safety materials Instructors need to know about resources available Instructors need ideas on weaving safety into other programs

Rank

31.5 14.6 13.3 10.8 10.7 4.9 3.5

Instructors need safety and productivity information 2.4 Instructors need better correction cost information 1.9 Safety costs too much for farmers 1.6 Other” 4.8

Safety programs and materials are very boring Instructors need better injury cost information

”Other includes most students not on farm (6).

“safety costs too much for farmers,” or because instructors needed better information about “correction costs” or about “safety and productivity.”

DISCUSSION Strengths of Agricultural Education Instructor Efforts

One strength of the agricultural education approach to safety was the consistent instructor commitment to the area. Nearly all the instructors devoted some time to health and safety-related activities, and there were no differences in the amount of time spent for those with longer or shorter teaching careers. More than two thirds of this time was spent actually teaching students in the classroom and laboratory (Table I). Another strength was that the instructors’ activities were not limited to teaching. Twenty percent of instructor time on agricultural health and safety activities was devoted to personal study, continuing education, and providing assistance to others running extracurricular programs about agricultural safety and health (Table I). The instructors were also actively working in larger partnerships with organizations in the public and private sector to reduce agricultural injury and disease. They collaborated extensively with a range of resource people knowledgeable about agricultural health and hazards. More than half reported working with Cooperative Extension agents, and many involved farmers, farm equipment dealers, agricultural suppliers, and medical personnel in their activities (Table 111).

New Materials Wisconsin secondary school agricultural education instructors were clearly in-

terested in improving their personal collections of teaching materials and training aids on agricultural safety and health. Beyond issues of time pressures and lack of student interest, the most important challenges the instructors felt they faced were a lack of materials, a need to know more about available resources, and a need for ideas about weaving safety into other programs (Table VI). The instructors expressed greatest interest in new materials that could be used easily in classroom or laboratory settings (e.g., videotapes, leader training packets, demonstrations) (Table IV).


In response to the questionnaire results, new materials have been made available to school-based agricultural education instructors in Wisconsin. Shortly after the last completed questionnaires were returned, a compendium of short format health and safety materials was sent to the agricultural education instructors who were members of the Wisconsin Association of Vocational Agriculture Instructors’ farm safety committee, who, in turn, were encouraged to provide copies of requested or relevant material to individual instructors. The compendium also included sources of other materials, such as listings of low-cost videotapes and how to obtain them. One section described information about resource people and organizations. Taken together, these materials may be able to reduce the time that school-based agricultural education instructors need to spend preparing lessons, locating current material, and identifying resources. However, there is no evidence that merely providing new materials to agricultural education instructors will improve their agricultural injury and disease prevention effectiveness. It is more important to reorient instructors about what injury control strategies work best through in-service training and similar approaches. In addition to providing new materials , workshops on agricultural occupational health topics for Wisconsin school-based agricultural education instructors have been sched- uled during their annual statewide and regional meetings.

Teaching Hazard Recognition Few instructors agreed that hazard correction was more effective than training

in how to work safely around hazards (Table V). This could explain why they spent little time on hazard inspections (Table I) and why they ranked as more important and expressed more interest in instructional topics that were oriented toward working safely around hazards instead of how to correct hazards (Table 11). The weight of the published evidence and the experience of industry and government with job-related injury supports a much higher priority for hazard control than teaching individuals how to act more safely [Robertson, 1983; Murphy, 19921.

Wisconsin agricultural education instructors are not unique in their lack of appreciation for the value of teaching hazard recognition, identification, and control. A study of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension agents found that they also failed to appreciate hazard control [Chapman et al., 19921. The existing literature includes a national study of 103 college-level teacher educators who trained agricultural education instructors [Forsythe, 19831. Only a few felt their student agricultural education instructors were very well prepared in safety instruction. The teacher educators also felt they had limited training themselves in the process of hazard control, and they emphasized training in how to work safely around hazards more than training about permanent hazard corrections to create safer work environments. According to the study authors, much of the safety instruction provided by teacher educators in agriculture appeared to be incidental in nature and lacked any structured or formal sequence [Forsythe, 19831.

Information from state surveys of agricultural education instructors themselves has tended to corroborate the agricultural teacher educator study findings of a lack of emphasis on hazard correction and the incidental nature of work safety efforts. An Iowa survey of high school agricultural education instructors showed they spent about 11% of agricultural mechanics course time teaching safety, most often via demonstrations and lecture-exam instructional methods [Bekkum and Hoerner, 19901. How- ever, hazard inspections were undertaken by less than one third of the teachers and

574 Chapman et al.

were rated 14th of 16 safety techniques in importance. A questionnaire survey of 183 Indiana agricultural education instructors in high schools found they did more safety instruction in agricultural mechanics classes than in their other course offerings, and that they generally used films and discussion as instructional methods [Durkes and Field, 19921. However, nearly half reported they did not set aside specific time in the curriculum for teaching safety.

The laboratory instruction portion of agricultural education is known to expose both students and instructors to hazards. An analysis of 954 laboratory “accidents” described by 159 Virginia agricultural mechanics teachers during the 1987-88 school year determined that 48 resulted in severe injuries to students [Burke and Duenk, 19891. An Alabama study determined that even experienced agribusiness teachers had not adopted many of the approved practices for agricultural mechanics laboratory safety [Preyer and Williams, 19801, One of the encouraging findings from our study was that Wisconsin agricultural education instructors inspected their laboratories for safety hazards annually or more often (Table V).

Traditional safety education programs for school age youth, like the tractor and machinery safety certification course often taught by agricultural education instructors, have come under criticism for their focus on educating people in how to avoid injuries instead of directly modifying the unsafe conditions that contribute to injuries [Robertson, 1983; Murphy, 19921. For example, high school driver education is being reconsidered in light of evidence that the programs fail to improve the crash experience of participants compared to matched controls [Robertson, 19831. Studies have shown that driver education courses encourage more teenagers to become li- censed and to drive sooner, which results in more vehicle crashes and injuries among youth than if no courses were available [Robertson, 19831. Of even greater concern are findings that participants of some safety education courses (i.e. , convicted alco- hol-impaired drivers and motorcycle drivers) have subsequent driving and injury records that are measurably worse than those of carefully matched nonparticipants [Kraus, 1980; Robertson, 19831.

Wisconsin agricultural education instructors were willing cooperators in the effort to deliver safety training to youth through the federally mandated tractor and machinery certification course. They participate without pay and were interested in new material and resource people to improve the training intervention. However, published evaluative research has repeatedly failed to demonstrate that the tractor and machinery safety certification course improves the subsequent injury experience of farm youth participants compared to controls [Williams, 1983; Reisenberg and Bear, 1980; Silletto, 19761. Self-report data from a recent study of 185 Wisconsin youth showed that the number with daily exposure to tractor operation nearly doubled after completing the certification course and that daily exposures to tractors lacking safety devices that provide rollover protection increased more than exposures to tractors with the safety devices [Wilkinson et al., 19931. The protective value of the tractor and machinery safety certification course for farm youth needs further study to determine whether the availability of training has the net result of increasing the number of teenage tractor operators and the number of injuries beyond a situation in which no training or certification is available. Requiring that tractors operated by 14 and 15 year olds have rollover protective structures is more likely to save lives than any educational intervention.

Agricultural education instructors may place greater emphasis on teaching peo-


ple how to act safely because they view hazard correction as unworkable in small business agriculture or because they believe their students lack the authority to ensure that hazards are corrected. On farms, permanently correcting hazards is sometimes difficult due to particular job demands (e.g., needs to periodically remove machinery guards for maintenance) or cost considerations (e.g., expense of retrofitting older tractors with rollover protection). As a result, most safety programming has attempted to train agricultural workers in safer work procedures when hazards are present (e.g., training in safer tractor operation to avoid rollovers or to avoid proximity to exposed moving machinery parts) rather than eliminating the hazard. Research has shown, however, that training approaches that focus on teaching safer work procedures have great difficulty recruiting participants and fail to change behavior, even when knowledge improvements and attitude change can be demonstrated [Grant, 1991; May, 1990; Jansson and Eriksson, 1990; Murphy, 1981; Robertson, 19831. In addition, training individuals in safer work behavior may be ill advised since there is evidence that it can have unintended effects (e.g., serve to legitimate failures to correct hazards, provide a false sense of security, or encourage risk taking) [Robertson, 19831.

Changing familiar work habits is not easy because maintaining changes requires repeated acts of voluntary cooperation by workers [Haddon, 19781. Human capabil- ities are also not designed for constant vigilance (e.g., remembering never to come near exposed moving parts). Also, factors not under individual control and that cannot be reasonably anticipated contribute to injuries (e.g., tractor rollovers that result from riding over hidden obstacles). Agricultural machinery can be unforgiving since it works at speeds much faster than a human operator can react to (e.g., limb entanglement while dislodging cornstalks jammed in a combine head).

Hazard control proponents argue that, compared to training individuals in safer work behavior, correcting hazards is more cost-effective approach and that there is more clear proof of its value for saving lives. Hazard control has a record of proven effectiveness for the prevention of injury and illness in industrial workplaces as well as in homes and motor vehicles [Haddon, 1978; Robertson, 1983; National Commit- tee for Injury Prevention and Control, 19891.

Controlling injuries and disease in production agriculture work is a complicated and difficult affair. Agricultural education instructors are conscientiously implement- ing what they believe to be consensus science about protecting health and safety in the activities they conduct both inside and outside the classroom. Although their approach can be criticized from academic injury control and public health viewpoints, agricultural education instructors are engaged with farm youth and with larger net- works of production agriculture safety and health professionals fulfilling needed roles. One danger in emphasizing the ultimate futility of the traditional training the instructors are providing to farm youth to work more safely is that the instructors will abdicate all safety and health efforts out of frustration. Any new approach, to be successful, will need to be gradual and will also need to redirect the efforts of all the professional and lay agricultural safety and health resource people.

CONCLUSIONS

To more effectively control injuries in agricultural work, agricultural education instructors will need to take a more systematic approach to safety and health, and to emphasize teaching skills in hazard recognition, identification, and control. Along

576 Chapman et al.

with agricultural education instructors, the other partners in agricultural injury and disease control, including Cooperative Extension agents, agricultural equipment dealers and suppliers, public health nurses, and medical personnel, will need to supple- ment their efforts so that they place greater emphasis on the permanent modification of unsafe conditions. In-service training, along with developing and distributing new materials oriented toward these goals, could make it easier for agricultural education instructors to change their programs. Along with a reorientation of their efforts and better materials, effective education for injury and disease prevention may require a greater classroom and laboratory time commitment. Future research needs to focus on how to improve instructor understanding of what is effective injury control and how to integrate that knowledge into their activities. A second question is whether classroom or laboratory instruction needs to be supplemented by more direct efforts to control hazards.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful for the cooperation of Wisconsin agricultural education instructors. Leonard Massie and Mark Purschwitz provided comments on earlier versions of this paper. Part of this work was supported through Agricultural Health Promotion Systems cooperative agreement U05/CCU506065-0 1 from the U .S . Cen- ters for Disease Control’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

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