Agricultural Workplace Safety: A Perspective on Research Needs

"Safety is a scarce resource. To allocate this resource optimally, two basic questions must be answered. What level of safety shoud we be seeking? (How safe should we be?) What is the least costly way of achieving this level? (In what ways can we buy safety most cheaply?)" (Lave 1968, p. 512). These two questions are simple and direct, but, unfortunately, answers to them have proven elusive. Response to the first is contingent on understanding the costs and benefits associated with each attainable level of workplace safety. Answers to the second are obtained by evaluating alternative technologies and public policy options. In recent years, safety standards have been the most frequently advocated method for reducing the level of workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths. Billions of dollars have been expended and thousands of new regulations have been written. In the agricultural sector alone, estimates prepared prior to promulgation of the roll-over protection standards for tractors and the farm machinery guarding standards suggested that first year costs of these combined standards equaled about 20% of the total annual agricultural wage bill (U.S. Department of Labor 1974). The regulatory approach, as embodied in the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 is but one of five possible approaches to address the goals of workplace accident reduction. The others include: (a) the competitive market approach (i.e. setting wage differentials to compensate workers for higher levels of risk); (b) resorting to the judicial process for assignment of fault and awarding of compensatory judgments; (c) allocating the risk and compensatory payments through the insurance industry; and (d) the use of educational and informational institutions to distribute results of safety research efforts to workers, employers and self-employed entrepreneurs. It is the opinion of the authors that an optimal solution to the two questions posed at the beginning of this paper will come about only as a result of an integration of these five approaches. To foster discussion of this desired goal the present paper is designed to: (a) provide a cursory examination of workplace accident causal factors; (b) define the nature of each policy alternative which impacts on the level of workplace safety; (c) describe the application of each policy to the agricultural sector; and (d) identify the research required to move in the direction of providing policy responses to the twin questions of "how much" and "at what cost?"