URBANA, Ill.— The lack of a central source of reliable data regarding the reporting of on-farm accidents and fatalities has always been a source of frustration for those who work to reduce agricultural injuries. Though larger farms with more than 10 employees are required to report workplace injuries to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), mishaps on smaller farms often go largely unreported. 

A pair of new reports issued by the University of Illinois provide a systematic overview of grassroots sources for agricultural injury reports and identify alternate sources of reporting outside of mandatory OSHA notifications. The sources included newspaper clippings, surveys, death certificates, hospital records, emergency medical service data and other reports.

The first study, which involved a review of 48 academic reports published in the United States and Canada between 1985 and 2022, found that vehicles (including tractors and ATVs) were the most common source of injury, with over 55,000 reported cases, as well as farm-related fatalities.  

“We will be publishing our full 2023 study results probably sometime in May,” said Salah Issa, Illinois Extension specialist and assistant professor in the U of I Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering (ABE). Issa came to Urbana after earning his Ph.D at Purdue University under Dr. William Fields, who leads Purdue’s independent surveillance of annual farm accident reports in Indiana. 

“The question I was trying to answer with lead author Sihan Li was how to differentiate this Illinois study from previous studies in order to get a total picture. Depending on the surveillance system overall, you do have a very different distribution of injuries, to say the least. For example, with death certificates around one-third of our cases come from vehicles, and another third from farm related machinery. If you look at surveys the two areas with the most cases reported involved structures and surfaces, and incidents involving animals,” Issa said.

In addition, newspaper clippings are around 70 percent devoted to reporting farm injuries and deaths involving confined spaces, such as grain bins, and other structures and surfaces, according to Li and Issa’s research. “When we did our own survey of Illinois, we noticed that you can see where each surveillance system seems to have a different focus area and they produce data depending on where their focus is. To develop a comprehensive solution, we cannot depend on just one source,” Issa said. 

The study also found that ages of farm accident victims varied by surveillance method, with newspaper clippings skewed to younger victims (22 percent of incidents) and death certificates leaning towards older victims (30 percent over 65).

For the second study, researchers including doctoral student and lead author Mian Muhammad Sajid Raza reviewed 69 articles from 17 countries in North America, Europe, and Asia, including the U.S., Canada, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Austria, Italy and others. The main data sources identified in these studies were hospital records, followed by surveys, government records (including death certificates), insurance claims and multiple other sources.

“We took a slightly different approach with our global report. Since the vast majority of reports involved farm machinery, including tractors, we looked for trends and divergences. Not surprisingly, tractors were the number one cause of injury regardless of region,” said Issa. 

“However, the numbers two and three were divergent. In America, ATVs are number three but are rarely mentioned in Asia. Also in Asia there were a significant number of injuries involving harvest machinery, like threshers and forage cutters. Each region has a different way to collect data, and newspaper clippings seem to be an American news phenomenon. You see more insurance data reported and published in both Asia and Europe.”

In conclusion, Issa said taken collectively the reports illustrate that farm injuries are a global concern that occur far too frequently. “By industry, the highest rate of injury still occurs in agriculture according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Farm machinery and vehicles are overall one of the largest sources of injuries, and we’re really interested to see if that trend holds globally. Cases are being missed because different regions use different (tracking) methods,” Issa said, adding that understanding the nature and source of injuries is important for developing educational programs and interventions. 

Both papers, “Agricultural Injury Surveillance in the United States and Canada: A Systematic Literature Review” and “Global Patterns of Agricultural Machine and Equipment Injuries- A Systematic Literature Review” are published in the Journal of Agromedicine.