This week is Agricultural Safety Awareness Program Week. Farm Bureau partners with the U.S. Agricultural Safety and Health Centers to promote this week each year in an effort to reduce the number of farm-related work injuries and death by promoting safety practices. The theme this year is “Prepare. Prevent. Protect.” Each day this week also has a different theme, with Thursday being Youth Safety.
“To me, it’s an issue of being a good role model. If your kids see you taking shortcuts, they’re going to do the same thing,” says Dr. Bill Field, Purdue University professor and field safety specialist.
“If my children, I have 5 kids, if they watch me step over a power driveline and do it just sort of like, ‘Gee that’s something I do all the time,’ why would I expect them to do anything different when they got to be in a position where they’re doing the same thing? Or if they watch me take a shortcut with respect to our cattle or going out and doing something around our bull and they begin to say, ‘Well if he can do it, I can do it.’ So, I think it’s important we become better role models of safety on our farms with our children, with those that visit us, and our employees. If we can’t act and behave in a safe way around our employees, why are we picking on them when they do things that are unsafe?”
A promotional toolkit to support safety and health in ag and rural communities is available online at fb.org. Follow the #ASAP22 on social media to learn more.
