Abstracts from the Virtual 2021 North American Agricultural Safety Summit.

The Journal of Agromedicine is pleased to share the following 26 abstracts accepted for poster presentations and lightning talks at the 2021 North American Agricultural Safety Summit. The host organization, Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America (ASHCA) convened leaders in agribusiness and safety research March 22-24 for an online forum honoring safety innovators and sharing evidence-based safety interventions. The summit drew risk managers, educators, government officials and others interested in improving worker safety in one of the nation's most hazardous industries. It received support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Conference Grant 5U15OH011786-02) and support from sponsoring organizations to ensure that event participants benefited from the sharing of research results and ongoing intervention evaluations. To that end, the Journal shares these abstracts of completed or ongoing agricultural safety and health research. More information can be found at www.ashca.org.

Establishing a publicly available national database of US news articles reporting agriculture-related injuries and fatalities.

BACKGROUND: The AgInjuryNews system and dataset are a news report repository and information source for agricultural safety professionals, policymakers, journalists, and law enforcement officials. METHODS: AgInjuryNews was designed as a primary storage and retrieval system that allows users to: identify agricultural injury/fatality events; identify injury agents and emerging issues; provide safety messages for media in anticipation of trends; and raise awareness and knowledge of agricultural injuries and prevention strategies. Data are primarily collected through Google Alerts and a digital media subscription service. Articles are screened, reviewed, coded, and entered into the system. RESULTS: As of January 1, 2018, the system contained 3028 unique incidents. Of those, 650 involved youth, and 1807 were fatalities. The system also had registered 329 users from 39 countries. CONCLUSIONS: AgInjuryNews combines injury reports into one dataset and may be the most current and comprehensive publicly available collection of news reports on agricultural injuries and deaths.

How Agricultural Media Cover Safety Compared with Periodicals in Two Other Hazardous Industries.

This analysis featured a uniquely broad look at challenges and potentials for engaging agricultural and other industrial media more effectively in covering safety. It involved a content analysis of selected industry periodicals serving agriculture, mining, and transportation, which are three of the nation's most hazardous industries, in terms of human safety. Use of the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) provided insight on safety coverage. In particular, it tested previous research indicating that media coverage tends to amplify (increase) more than attenuate (decrease) a sense of risk. Analysis involved 18 periodicals (9 agriculture, 7 transportation, and 2 mining) spanning a five-year period from 2008 to 2012. Full-text digital analysis identified terms found in safety articles across all three industries. A manual review of articles revealed the quantity and nature of safety coverage within and among these industries. Results identified 528 safety-related articles published during the period. Transportation and mining periodicals averaged more than twice as many safety articles as the agricultural periodicals. The amount of coverage within the three industries also varied greatly. Findings on the nature of coverage supported previous media research within the SARF. Coverage across all three industries was clearly oriented more to amplifying than to attenuating risk. This study adds to the understanding of variations, commonalities, challenges, and potentials for enhancing safety coverage by media serving these three industries. It also provides direction for engaging industry media more effectively in the public safety mission. The authors recommend seven areas of opportunity for further research.

Agricultural Media Coverage of Farm Safety: Review of the Literature.

Agricultural media merit increased attention in addressing dynamic changes in safety aspects of one of the nation's most hazardous industries. Changes in farming, such as larger-scale, new "niche" enterprises and new technologies, bring new forms of risk to the safety of those who live and work on farms and ranches. At the same time, traditional agricultural media--commercial firms that publish farm periodicals and commercial radio/television stations and networks that provide farm programming--are changing dramatically. In the face of media convergence, these enterprises provide an increasing menu of agricultural information services delivered by print, radio, and television, plus a host of new electronic media. This review of literature addressed the role and importance of commercial agricultural media in the United States, the scope and pattern of their safety coverage, and the opportunities they represent. The review involved searches of 14 bibliographic databases, as well as reference lists of relevant studies and contacts with farm safety experts. Analysis of 122 documents suggested that limited focus has been directed to the role of commercial agricultural media in safety decisions on US farms. Findings revealed that they continue to serve an efficient, early-stage role in creating awareness and interest, providing information, forming attitudes, and stirring consideration of farm safety. Potentials are seen as expanding through the interactive features of social media and other new services offered by these media firms. Findings also identified research needs, 100 farm safety topics for reporting, and opportunities for strengthening safety coverage by commercial agricultural media.