Emerging work health and safety impacts on farmers literature review

Executive summary

Employment in agriculture embodies a range of work health and safety (WHS) risks that most directly affect farmers, their families and farm workers (Farmsafe Australia, 2020). The dynamic nature of these factors ensures that farming communities continuously innovate and adapt their operations in pursuit of rural livelihoods (i.e. ways of making a living). The agriculture sector in Australia and New South Wales (NSW), as elsewhere in the world, is increasingly facing a range of disruptions (social change, new technology, international commodity prices, biosecurity threats) that affect farmers’ ability to remain financially viable with the business models under which most of them currently operate. Among the range of drivers of change, agricultural systems are particularly vulnerable to increasing climate variability and extreme weather events. In response, farmers make changes to the way they operate by adopting new approaches to food and fibre production within their current farming system, by adopting a different farming system altogether (e.g. organic farming), or by exploring novel uses of agricultural land (e.g. energy generation). Such changes are likely to change the WHS risk profiles of farming communities. This report forms the first stage of research which is to identify the current impact of disruptors, increased climate variability in particular, on the WHS of farming communities.

The report will, firstly, briefly present the climatic and economic context in which farming communities are adapting to change, and draw on theories of vulnerability, resilience and adaptive capacity to explain the need for transformation. This will require alterations in agricultural livelihoods that will likely involve a spectrum of responses spanning adjustment of current farming practices (coping), incremental changes in enterprise mix of farming systems (incremental) and novel uses of land for non-agricultural enterprises (transformation). Secondly, the report will review the literature, through bibliometric and qualitative analysis of existing research globally and identify those practices that may be suitable for application in NSW agricultural sectors.

The literature review identified several research gaps with implications for WHS of farming communities:

1. Currently the WHS literature focuses mainly on the mental health impacts of drought, and does not consider physical WHS impacts.
2. The changes in farming systems and business models discussed in the scholarly literature focus mostly on the ‘persistence’ of existing systems (coping), through the implementation of changes in practices ‘at the margin’. However, transformational responses through fundamental changes to livelihoods and novel uses of agricultural land are beginning to emerge. Some ‘novel uses’ of agricultural lands are already being implemented in the agricultural landscape, such as those related to conservation, recreation, and to a lesser degree, alternative commercial uses. The potential effects of transformational changes to land use on agricultural industries and rural communities remain speculative but evidence suggests they could potentially alter the value of agricultural production and land value, the style and function of buildings, the viability of family-farm businesses and the loss of ecosystem services. Discussions of the WHS impacts of novel uses of land have not yet appeared in the literature and have not been linked to climate change possibly because their link to climate change adaptation might be indirect and involve complex, context-specific changes in exposure and sensitivity to climate drivers.
3. The link between changes in farming systems, business models and WHS risks has been the subject of only limited research interest (e.g. adjustment to risk profiles through adoption of organic farming systems). Changes in risk profiles due to adoption of transformational responses (novel uses of agricultural lands) have not been explored.

The findings of the literature review indicate that the way farming communities interact with the establishment of novel activities in farming environments, may create different risks and/or require a different way to communicate about those risks that require further research. Farming entrepreneurs are likely the principal actors in the transformation. This constitutes, according to us, the main research gap. While the WHS risks of the types of activities that constitute ‘novel uses of agricultural lands’ might be already known in other industry sectors; for example, in warehousing (Waters, Putz-Anderson, & Baron, 1998); hospitality (Sharma, 2019), and solar energy systems (Aman et al., 2015), for farmers, these represent emerging risks. In light of the already high rate of WHS incidents among farming communities, and their distinct physical and cultural environment, the way they manage WHS risks becomes an important issue in the development of sustainable rural livelihoods in NSW.

Read the full literature review (PDF, 4596.3 KB).