A Method to Quantify the Detailed Risk of Serious Injury in Agricultural Production

Noha Mahmoud,Allan Leck Jensen,Cairistiona F E Topp,Claus Aage Grøn Sørensen,Michael Nørremark,Vera Eory,Nicholas J Hutchings

doi:10.3390/su13073859

Noha Mahmoud, Allan Leck Jensen + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su13073859

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Journal: Sustainability	Publication Date: Mar 31, 2021
Citations: 1	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Aarhus University, Scotland's Rural College

Abstract

Agricultural injuries are a valuable social sustainability indicator. However, current methods use sector-scale production data, so are unable to assess the impact of changes in individual farming practices. Here, we developed a method that adopts a life cycle approach to quantify the number of serious injuries during agricultural production processes and assess the potential impact of changes in agricultural practices. The method disaggregates agricultural production into operations and estimates the contribution each operation makes to the frequency of different types of injuries. The method was tested using data collected by survey during an expert workshop in which sixteen participants were asked to estimate the parameters related to typical dairy cattle and pig farms. Parameter estimates for specific operations varied considerably between participants, so normalized values were used to disaggregate sector-scale statistics to production operations. The results were in general agreement with the results from other studies. Participants found it challenging to quantify the potential effect of new technologies. Provided suitable empirical statistical data are available, the method can be used to quantify the risk of injury associated with individual products and provide an ex-ante assessment of future developments in farming practices.

Highlights

Published: 31 March 2021With the rapid global population growth, the challenge is to achieve food security while ensuring that global agriculture develops sustainably across all three sustainability pillars: environmental, social and economic [1]
The method developed here adopts the approach used in Life cycle assessment (LCA), i.e., identifying the activities that are required to generate a unit of product and assessing the impact of those activities on workplace injuries
Using the absolute data values to calculate the incidence rates of serious injuries yields estimates that are higher by a factor of two and nine than the 1593 per 100,000 workers reported for Danish agricultural workers [22] (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Published: 31 March 2021With the rapid global population growth, the challenge is to achieve food security while ensuring that global agriculture develops sustainably across all three sustainability pillars: environmental, social and economic [1]. To support decision-making in connection with development in agriculture, a range of indicator-based, sustainability assessment tools have been developed. Assessment of Farming and the Environment (SAFE), Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) and life cycle assessments [2,3,4]. These combine environmental, social and economic indicators and require a wide range of multi-disciplinary themes to be assessed, weighted and aggregated [5]. There is an increasing focus on social impact as a main pillar of sustainability [9]

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