Agriculture is one of the largest industries in the province, and simultaneously one of the most dangerous. As seeding and calving season gets underway, safety is once again top of mind for local farmers and their employees.
Ryan Jacobson is the Chief Executive Officer with the Saskatchewan Safety Council (SSC) and formerly operated an agricultural farm in southeast Saskatchewan. He explains that every industry experiences gaps in safety protocols.
“Farming has a lot of high-risk activities to it and does have a high injury rate because of that and the nature of farming operations. There's not as many gaps as there used to be decades ago on our farms, with a lot of people having off-farm income or having off-farm jobs throughout their lives.”
Jacobson explains that many safety protocols seen on farms have migrated from other more hazardous industries, like oil and gas, mining, and construction.
He continues noting it’s a common misconception that farmers are exempt from safety laws and regulations. Farms and ranches, like all other places of employment, are subject to the Saskatchewan Employment Act and occupational health and safety regulations.
“There are a few provisions that farms are exempted from, things for hours of service and vacation time, but even those are fairly limited, generally, to immediate family members that are working on a family farm. And as soon as you have a paid employee, a lot of provisions come back, just like they do for any employer in Saskatchewan.”
One of these regulations under the Saskatchewan Employment Act includes the employer's responsibility to ensure, as far as reasonably practical, the health, safety, and welfare of employees. Anyone under an employer’s payroll must be aware if their legal rights and responsibilities. All workers also have the right to refuse work that is unsafe, or they feel is unduly dangerous to their health.
“Because of that, that employer, even a farmer, has to make sure that they're training those employees and supervising those employees in a suitable manner for their operation.”
Jacobson says the suitable manner of training has changed as operations have become larger and more employees are being hired seasonally or from outside the area. They all need training on the equipment and hazards specific to the operation they will be working on.
“By the time somebody's 14 or 15 years old on a family farm, they have a decade-plus of experience of working around heavy equipment or animals if it's a ranch. But if they're coming out of Toronto or Vancouver or Regina, Saskatoon, they may not have had that same experience, so they're not aware of all the same hazards as everybody else. So it's put a lot more emphasis on employee training when we're hiring seasonal workers for our agriculture operations to make sure that we can close those training gaps.”
Regarding equipment, farmers see a few more exemptions than other businesses that operate power mobile equipment, specifically regarding minimum training time. Requirements for inspection, however, are still in place. This includes the responsibility of the operator to conduct a pre-shift inspection of the equipment.
“If you're trained as an operator for a tractor, an air seeder, a combine, whatever the case is, you need to be able to conduct a pre-shift inspection, and that's supposed to include making sure any guards that are recommended by the manufacturer are still in place and that they're still going to protect you from harm, so you don't get wrapped into an auger or a PTO shaft or have some piece of the equipment come flying off and injure someone.”
Jacobson points to several common incidents that tend to occur on farms and ranches during busy seasons, noting that many stem from a combination of factors—including fatigue, emotional stress, distractions like cell phones, and even intoxication.
“A little bit of intoxication even from things like allergy medication for people that are taking that, that makes them a little drowsy or not quite fully focused. And when we're dealing with high-risk activities, with very large equipment and power lines and other things like that, having a bit too much fatigue or being emotionally distracted or having distractions from cell phones or other devices can really impact our ability to make safe decisions.”
He says their goal is to reduce these risk factors by emphasizing proper sleep and hydration among workers, while also keeping an eye out for distractions and other conditions that could impair decision-making.