Community Partners for Healthy Farming Intervention Research

Funding Period: 1999-2003

States involved in project: Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Illinois

We plan to pilot and evaluate an intervention and demonstration project at the community level that can reduce or prevent work-related injuries and diseases in farmworkers and their families. This proposal describes an effort to reduce musculoskeletal and traumatic injury and other job-related problems among small scale, labor-intensive, specialty crop growers. These growers raise a wide variety of crops including fresh market and organic vegetables, fruit, and horticultural specialty crops. We plan to accomplish the following specific aims:

1. Learn what small business, labor-intensive, specialty crop producers have done to create a safer and more profitable workplace in Wisconsin. Also, we plan to search out relevant technologies and management practices being used elsewhere (US and worldwide).
2. In collaboration with local producers, we will solicit and support the development of new modifications, including technologies and management practices, which have the potential to simultaneously improve safety and profitability.
3. Evaluate the impact of existing modifications, and modifications developed during the project, on producer profits and workplace hazards, using quantitative and qualitative methods.
4. Share the results with others in the state and elsewhere, in a promotion effort, and evaluate the impact of the promotion effort within a carefully-defined target group.

We plan to have two project phases which will run concurrently. Phase I will involve the first three specific aims, and will include identifying, acquiring or developing, testing, observing, and evaluating each modification on a number of our 24 pilot farms. We will study the work, the work hazards, and ways to reduce hazard exposures and improve work efficiency. We expect to begin this work immediately, since all project staff are named and available October 1, 1996. We also have identified, enlisted, and in some cases already visited, over two dozen pilot farms located within one hour's driving distance of our offices.

Phase II will consist of promoting the modifications among both small and large scale agriculture, labor-intensive, specialty crop producers throughout the state and region. We plan to utilize the agricultural newspapers, magazines, and other periodicals read most often by our target group, and have already established working arrangements with relevant producer publications staff. We also plan to involve county extension agents and will prepare them to field inquiries about modifications. We will also evaluate the success of the promotion effort among a well-defined group of 700-800 Wisconsin operations. One of our named co-investigators (Delahaut-Schneider) has developed a database of 700-800 fresh market vegetable operations in Wisconsin, using grant funding from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. We have also formed partnerships with local public health agencies, personnel in various research organizations, and with community-based groups serving agriculture production.

This research will be adaptable on a wider scale in the North Central states region and the nation, since the crops and tasks involved are largely generic with respect to labor-intensive crop production. The modifications should be easy for farmers to adopt since we are including consideration of the economic and organizational factors influencing adoption, by focusing on modifications that create a safer, and at the same time, more profitable and efficient workplace.

• Healthy Farmers, Health Profits Project
  http://bse.wisc.edu/hfhp
  
  

NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.