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Agricultural workers run at least twice the risk of dying on the job as workers in other sectors. In a global overview prepared for a recent conference on farm safety and health, the ILO reported that tens of thousands of agricultural workers die each year, and millions suffer injuries, or are poisoned by chemicals.
How dangerous is agricultural work? According to a report delivered to a recent international meeting of farm safety and health experts*, significantly more than other jobs. Some 170,000 agricultural workers die each year as a result of work hazards. And millions more of the world's 1.3 billion agricultural workers suffer serious injuries, or poisoning from pesticides or agro-chemicals.
In a keynote address, Ali Taqi, Assistant Director-General of the ILO told the recent International Conference on Occupational Health and Safety in Agriculture(*) that agriculture mortality rates have remained consistently high in the last decade, in sharp contrast to other dangerous occupations such as mining and construction, where fatal accident rates have decreased.
What's more, Mr. Taqi said the real picture of occupational safety and health for farm workers is likely to be worse than official statistics indicate, due to widespread under-reporting of deaths and injuries worldwide. The fatality rate, for example, may be up to one-third higher than reported.
A grim picture
Workers in developing countries are at especially high risk due to inadequate education, training and safety systems. But even in developed countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, agriculture ranks consistently among the most hazardous industries.
In the United States, for example, farmers and farm workers comprise only 3% of the workforce, but account for nearly 8% of all work-related accidents. In Italy, 9.7% of workers in agricultural production account for 28.7% of workplace accidents.
Though agriculture accounts on average for 9% of the workforce in most industrialized countries (ranging from 5.2% in the European Union to 20% in Eastern Europe), almost one-half of the world's total workforce remains involved in agricultural production. The largest concentrations are in developing countries: 25% in Latin America, 63% in Africa and 62% in Asia.
Increasingly, women and children are being affected. Mr. Taqi pointed out that "significantly, the share of women in agricultural employment world wide is growing, mainly due to the migration of men to urban centres seeking better opportunities, to the point where women now account for some 43% of the total workforce in agriculture." In addition, child labour is pervasive in agriculture. According to ILO estimates, in a number of developing countries, while economically active children between the ages of 5 and 14 comprise 10% of the total economically active population, 70% are engaged in agriculture.
Not all rules apply to agriculture
Although conditions vary greatly from country to country, agriculture tends to be excluded from many national labour laws and it is not subject to any comprehensive international standard. Where regulations exist, they are often sporadically applied due to inadequate legal provisions, low levels of unionization and insufficient labour inspection.
In addition to legislative shortcomings, some disadvantages common to most agricultural work include:
Dangers to life and limb
Major threats to agricultural workers are cutting-tools and machinery (such as tractors and harvesters). More than one-third of the deaths in farm occupations worldwide occurred in tractor-related incidents.
A study carried out by the Brazilian Institute on Occupational Safety and Health showed that nearly 40% of the total injuries reported involved manual tools, 88% of which were cutting tools and 12% machinery. Among the accidents provoked by machinery, 38% involved tractors.
In Chile, the labour inspectorate reported in 1993 that injuries due to machinery and tools accounted for more than one-third of all cases of occupational injury.
In the US, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health identified machinery-related accidents as the second leading cause of traumatic occupational fatalities. Tractors had both the highest frequency and fatality rates of all machinery types, followed by harvesting machinery and power tools.
A pesticide peril
Exposure to pesticides and agrochemicals constitutes another major risk for farm workers, accounting in some countries for as much as 14% of all occupational injuries in the agricultural sector and 10% of all fatalities.
Deficiencies in national reporting systems make data on pesticide poisoning notoriously underestimated. Developing countries consume more than 20% of the world production of agrochemicals, which are responsible for approximately 70% of the total cases of acute poisoning in the working population; i.e., more than 1.1 million cases. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates the total cases of pesticide poisoning worldwide at between 2 million and 5 million workers each year, of which 40,000 are fatal.
Central America, where the ILO operates a number of technical cooperation programmes, is illustrative but by no means exceptional. During the 1980s the importation and use of agrochemicals in the Central American region reached an annual average of 53,600 tons. More than 2,000 cases of acute poisoning were reported each year from countries in the region.
In Costa Rica, an extensive study of agrochemical use showed as much as 4 kilograms of pesticide used annually per capita during the last decade, eight times the 0.5 kg. average for the whole world population. In the period 1980-86, the official annual pesticide poisoning rate for the total wage earning population was 5.3 per 100,000 workers, and the average annual fatality rate was 1.7 per 100,000 compared with 0.3 per 100,000 in the United States in the same period. More than half of the victims (56.5%) were agricultural workers, with field workers accounting for 90% of the occupational poisonings, most of which occurred during the spraying of fields.
Experience elsewhere in Central America illustrates the very real difficulty of getting an accurate picture of the levels of pesticide poisonings due to under-reporting.
In Panama, for example, data from the Ministry of Health shows the rate of intoxication due to pesticide exposure at 5.6 per 100,000 in 1995. However estimates from the Social Security Institute (SSI) indicate that the rate in 1995 should have been 3,000 per 100,000. Taking into account that the SSI covers only 8.8% of agricultural workers, and the total number of occupational accidents registered in 1994 was 3,991, the expected number would be 9,651 if the total number of economically active agricultural workers in the country had been considered.
High risk, low benefits
In countries throughout the world, agricultural workers are often excluded from any employment injury benefit or insurance scheme. Administrative procedures for collecting injury records are often insufficient, thus reducing the incentive to report injuries or provide resources for compensation.
Since 1993, the ILO has worked with authorities and representatives of employers and workers in Central America to establish national policies on occupational safety and health in agriculture for the protection of agricultural workers, prevention of occupational accidents and diseases in agriculture, and protection of the environment. The project strategy includes updating of legislation, development of preventive health surveillance systems, improved information and training, and an environmental protection approach to dealing with agrochemicals.
*The International Conference on Occupational Health and Safety in Agriculture was held in Itasca, Illinois on 22-25 October, and was sponsored by the US National Safety Council with the cooperation of the ILO.