Background: This paper provides background and a process description for a national initiative ('Safe Farmer Common Sense') on prevention of occupational injuries in Swedish agriculture. Methods: This initiative, which received investment funding of 65 million SEK (6.5 million USD) from the European Union (EU) over the 5-year period 2009-2013, was jointly developed by researchers, agricultural organizations, authorities, and politicians. The program had a farmercentered perspective and included short courses, on-farm visits by supervisors, and a number of education events and awareness-promoting activities. Results: Our analysis showed that the concept was successful, since it involved farmers to a greater extent and prompted a high proportion of these to introduce injury prevention measures on their farms compared with a control group. The analysis also confirmed that these activities continued two-three years after participation in the program. Conclusion: The program was not found to have any major effect on the number of occupational injuries, although the level of occupational fatalities was lower during the intervention period. Thus the investment can be questioned as regards the limited impact on the number of workrelated injuries in Swedish agriculture and may have been too short to have a lasting effect.

Abstract. A comprehensive survey of injuries in Swedish agriculture was completed in 2013. The aim was to update the statistics on injuries and to compare them with data for 2004. The results were intended to provide a basis for evaluating the effect of Swedish initiatives to reduce occupational injuries in agriculture. In 2013, there were about 63,000 active farms in Sweden, and questionnaires with 21 questions were sent out to a sample of 6000 of these farms. The most important question was whether any injuries had occurred during 2013. Farms that reported injuries were contacted by telephone with additional questions about the injuries. A total of 3375 farms (56%) responded to the questionnaire. After population-level extrapolation, there were approximately 4400 injuries in Swedish agriculture during 2013 (66% in farming, 18% in mixed farming-forestry, and 14% in other related business activities). According to official statistics, there were only about 344 registered occupational injuries, which means that only 7% of the injuries reported in the questionnaire responses were listed in official statistics. In all, at least one injury occurred on about 7% of all enterprises with farming or combined farming-forestry. About 70% of the affected farms had animals, and 17% of all dairy farms had one or more injuries during 2013. According to this study, the overall number of injuries on farms had fallen by about 12% in 2013 compared with the corresponding study in 2004. Taking into account the reduced labor demand in agriculture and the decline in the number of farms since 2004, the rate of injury has not been reduced. To reduce occupational injuries in agriculture, in recent years the industry and government have been working intensively on work environment advice and training for farmers. Our study showed that farmers who received work environment advice and training introduced more measures to prevent injuries than those without any advisory input. It is alarming that despite all efforts to reduce injuries in agriculture, the level is still very high compared with other industries. Safety campaigns and more permanent safety initiatives in agriculture are needed to raise awareness of occupational risk factors and encourage safe behaviors. Keywords: Agriculture, Extension, Farming, Injury prevention, Injury statistics, Occupational injuries.

Farm work safety intervention programs based on educating and informing have been criticized for not demonstrably improving work safety. We argue that these criticisms are misplaced and that the problem with educating and informing lies not necessarily in the tool, but rather in its implementation. We arrive at this conclusion by systematically investigating eight of the largest farm work safety interventions in Sweden. In particular, we describe how they use fear and other emotional appeals in their communications in an attempt to motivate improved work safety. We then analyze their implementation using the extended parallel processing model (EPPM). We show that, although threat of injury and death is used in the majority of these interventions to motivate individuals, the threat is inconsistent with the behaviors targeted. Other shortcomings and implications for implementing wide-scale farm work safety interventions are discussed.

BACKGROUND: Occupational injuries are a major problem in agriculture world-wide. OBJECTIVE: Sweden is developing a national approach to scoordinate different stakeholders with the common goal of reducing injuries in the agricultural sector. METHOD: The Swedish strategy involves important factors, such as: 1) Collaboration between all stakeholders involved in health and safety in agriculture, 2) A national programme on injury prevention, 3) Coordination of actions and 4) Knowledge, attitude and behaviour in focus. PARTICIPANTS: This approach is being coordinated through the Swedish Committee on Working Environment (LAMK), a network acting to achieve a good, healthy and safe working environment in Swedish agriculture. The Committee consists of representatives of authorities, institutions, companies, research and education institutions and organisations working in the green sector. RESULTS: The Swedish model will be evaluated as a whole concept on its effect on the frequency of injuries in the agricultural industry in the beginning of 2014. Promising results has been shown in evaluations of minor parts. CONCLUSIONS: This coordinated approach has been applied in others countries (United States and New Zealand) as well and seems like an efficient way of using limited resources to achieve higher impact on a specific problems such as occupational injuries in agriculture.

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