The human element: rights and responsibilities, safety and stress
The human element of farming is too often overlooked, but vitally important. It is, after all, why many people farm in the first place: to feed people, to employ people, to provide a good quality of life for oneself and one’s loved ones.
This chapter will help you learn how to proactively protect the physical and mental health of yourself, anyone else working on your farm, your customers, and your community. It will also talk about how to work towards the long-term sustainability of your farm by engaging your community and planning how you will pass the baton.
Many of these topics could benefit from a full chapter on their own, and much has been written about them already. This chapter will focus on putting these topics in the context of urban farming. Additional reading is recommended on the topics most relevant to your situation.
Physical health and safety
Physical farm safety risks are very specific to individual farms. Urban farms might need to consider safety related to small-scale farm equipment, hand-tool ergonomics, heat and sun exposure, air quality, pest control products (including organic sprays!), and youth on the farm. A farm task safety audit can help you think through tasks specific to your farm, and how to reduce the risk of injury. All farms should have an emergency response plan, and include it in trainings for workers and volunteers.
Mechanized equipment used on urban farms might include small vegetable tractors, walk-behind tractors, tillers, lawn mowers, weed whips, carpentry tools, and chainsaws.
There is a lot to learn about how to use these tools safely, but the most important safety tip is to take your time and take breaks as needed. Tractors and power tools are unforgiving of the mistakes that you will make when you hurry or push yourself beyond exhaustion, hunger, and heat stress. Never, ever, try to clear a jammed tiller or mower with your hand.
Tool banks or hardware stores that rent out power tools may offer safety classes for those borrowing tools. In the links at the end of this chapter, the Power Tool Institute has a great one-page safety tip sheet and Penn State Extension has guide to the most common riding tractor safety risks.
Ergonomic considerations will save you literal pain in the future. Back and shoulder injuries and chronic pain (work-related musculo-skeletal disorders) are common among farmers and farm-workers and can be disabling. But these injuries are preventable. You can practice good form and adapt tools and workstations to make lifting and carrying loads and performing repetitive physical work safer. For example, something as simple as choosing harvest totes with handles can make the tote easier to carry and reduce the risk of back injury. For more principles of ergonomics, and case studies of adaptations, see Simple solutions: Ergonomics for farm workers by Baron et al. (2001).
If you are in a leadership position on your farm, it is important that you set a good example by proactively taking care of your body and working with others to lift heavy items. You might consider adopting a restorative physical practice such as stretching, yoga, or tai chi. Strength training in the off season, particularly of the core muscles, may also help prevent back strain.
Implementing health and safety measures is wise, but certain minimum measures are required by law. Maryland Occupational Safety and Health (MOSH), a division of the Department of Labor and Licensing Regulation, sets and enforces standards for workplace safety and health. MOSH standards for agricultural work largely mirror the federal Occupational Safety & Health Act standards, which set the baseline measures to reduce and manage safety risks associated with use of heavy machinery (e.g. tractors) and also include basic requirements for hygiene and drinking facilities. Specific regulations are listed in OSHA Part 1928: Occupational Safety and Health Standards for Agriculture. See the links at the end of the chapter for this reference, as well as articles to help you understand whether you are complying with MOSH standards.
Heat-exposure and sun-exposure are health risks for anyone who works outdoors. Safety precautions are necessary to reduce the risk of life-threatening illnesses such as heat stroke and skin cancer. Everyone, regardless of skin tone, can be at risk of developing skin cancer, and should take precautions to minimize sun exposure.
The risk of heat-related illnesses is increased by high humidity and inside high tunnels. Certain individuals may be at higher risk of experiencing heat-related illnesses, including older individuals, infants, and people with circulatory or heart conditions. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has published a chart to guide employers in managing the risk of heat-related illness. For more and up-to-date information, visit https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/heatstress/index.html
In urban areas, air quality is an additional risk to consider when working outdoors. Air pollutants such as ozone and particulate matter vary from day to day depending on weather conditions such as wind speed and atmospheric inversions. The US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) monitors air quality and offers an online Air Quality Index forecast: https://www.airnow.gov/index.cfm?action=airnow.main
When using any pesticide, even products labelled for use on organic farms, you must follow the instructions on the label. The label should include safety precautions to take.
Certain pesticides are only available for purchase to people who have undergone advanced training: these are called Restricted Use Pesticides. In Maryland, people who are allowed to purchase Restricted Use Pesticides must be certified by the Maryland Department of Agriculture.
Other, general use pesticides are available for sale “over the counter” so to speak. These include organic products commonly used by urban farmers, such as neem oil, Bacillus thuringiensis (BT), kaolin clay, and concentrated vinegar. These products should still be treated with respect and used according to labelled instructions. Farms or businesses that use pesticides likely will need to comply with the Worker Protection Standard (WPS). For a quick introduction to your responsibilities under the WPS, see the UMD Extension factsheet “What Farmers Need to Know about the Worker Protection Standard” by Little and Everhart (2019).
If youth are an important part of your urban agriculture work, it will be important to consider their safety, and what learning and working experiences are developmentally appropriate for their ages. Penn State Extension has a very helpful article on children and safety on the farm, with a table showing appropriate farm work tasks and safety risks to consider for different age ranges (Murphy 2014).
Keep in mind that the federal Fair Labor Standards Act and other state laws impose limits on child labor, such that minors may only work outside of school hours and youths under 16 are generally limited to non hazardous job duties. Hazard-based limitations are set by age brackets and may require prior certification or training. For more information, see Child Labor Laws in Agriculture: What You Need to Know.
Additionally, soil contamination is a risk that disproportionately affects youth. So testing for metal contaminants like lead is advised in particular for farms and gardens where youth will be visiting and working. For more on soil contamination risk management, see the Production chapter.
For the above risks, and for others more specific to your own situation, a safety audit can help identify sources of risk and ways to reduce that risk. The article linked above on youth on-farm safety has a template for one kind of safety audit, that helps the reader walk through the steps of a specific activity to identify where injuries could occur. Another kind of safety audit template is a checklist of common farm safety risks (Runyon 2009).
Proactively planning to reduce safety risks as described above is meant to prevent injuries and emergencies. But the final step in being prepared is to have an emergency response plan, and to clearly communicate that plan to visitors and as part of employee and volunteer trainings. Look back at the topics described above and consider which could result in an emergency situation at your farm or garden. What would you need on hand to respond to that situation effectively? What actions would you and others on your team need to take to protect people’s safety? For example, if you needed to direct emergency first responders to your location, do you know the street address of the location where you work? Does everyone on your team know the address? Is it visible from the road?
First aid training might be worth pursuing. If you want to be able to respond with first aid in an emergency situation, be sure to keep your first aid certification current and understand the duty of care that you enter into once you begin administering first aid (Williams 2017). A wilderness first aid class might be more relevant to the types of injuries and illnesses you could encounter working outdoors, such as heat stress and sprains.
Mental health and stress management
"I need to fix the problem, I don't have time to de-stress." That’s how I felt about stress management until very recently.
However, no matter how hard you work, life is going to continue being stressful. And farming can be a particularly stressful profession: long hours of both physical and social labor, with unpredictable weather and financial challenges.
The chronic stress of dealing with these challenges can, over time, negatively affect your physical and mental health. When you remain constantly in a “fight-or-flight” stress response state for a long period of time, the elevated levels of stress hormones in your body can cause long-term changes in your body that increase your risk of heart attack or stroke.
And if you spend all your time on the farm feeling worried, angry, frightened, and discouraged, over time you will no longer want to farm. The pressure and risk of burnout is greater the higher-stakes your farm goals are, whether your goals are to make a full living from farming or to address big systemic problems in your community through your urban agriculture work.
This means that problems on the farm require a two-pronged approach: both working towards solving the root cause of the problem and working to take care of yourself regardless of the outcome. Regularly working to get your mind and body out of stress mode is a productive use of your time.
University of Maryland Extension has gathered farm stress and mental health resources online: https://extension.umd.edu/programs/agriculture/program/integrated-programs/farm-stress-management/stress-management
For help finding a health-care provider relevant to your needs, check out the Maryland Network of Care website: https://portal.networkofcare.org/Sites/Maryland They have a surprisingly intuitive web-tool for finding mental and behavioral health care providers and not-for-profits.
Health insurance
Finding and paying for health insurance and health care is an enormous challenge for entrepreneurs.
Many farmers say that getting health insurance coverage for their family is the primary motivation for someone in the family working off-farm. A national survey of farmers found that 41% of farm households get their health insurance from an off-farm employer, 28% directly purchase a private policy, and 24% use a public health insurance program such as CHIP, Medicare, or Medicaid. Patching together health insurance coverage from among the many options available can be confusing and expensive. In 2016, farm households paid, on average, $659 per month on health insurance premiums (Becot and Inwood 2019).
For those farmers who are employers themselves, finding a way to support their employees’ health care can be an even bigger challenge. The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) is a program through the federal Health Insurance Marketplaces to help small businesses offer health insurance to their employees. Health Reimbursement Accounts are another option that offers the employer tax advantages (Pippidis 2018).
Despite the challenge, health insurance is a very important risk management tool. Farming is a physically taxing profession, and an injury or illness can quickly put the future of the farm in jeopardy.
University of Maryland Extension gathers health insurance information for farmers online here: https://extension.umd.edu./programs/family-consumer-sciences/health-insurance-literacy/farmers
In particular, the article “Farm Operations and Health Care Insurance” by Maria Pippidis, does a good job of explaining the options and key concepts.
Employees and volunteers
A farmer has certain responsibilities towards anyone working on their farm, which are legally defined by local, state, and federal labor laws.
It is important to understand that there are important legal differences between employees and volunteers. Additionally, for profit businesses are not supposed to accept volunteer labor, and even not-for-profit farms may run into legal trouble with volunteers and unpaid interns.
But wait, you say, farms host volunteers all the time! Some farms offer “sweat-equity” CSA shares which discount the share price in exchange for volunteer work on the farm. Other farms offer unpaid “internships” or “apprenticeships,” occasionally providing lodging and food to these interns. And, famously, the WOOF program matches voluntourists with organic farms around the world.
However, labor laws, like the minimum wage and workers compensation rules, generally do apply to farm interns and volunteers. There are good reasons why we have labor laws. They are meant to protect workers from exploitation, abuse, and unsafe working conditions.
You might have the best of intentions towards people working on your farm. But good intentions are not enough. Whether your farm is organized as a for-profit or not-for-profit, failing to understand and comply with labor laws exposes your farm to legal and financial risk.
If your farm has employees, volunteers, interns, apprentices, or anyone who works in exchange for food or lodging, you should learn more about labor laws and consider how to manage your farm’s responsibilities and risks. Conversely, if you are a farm worker, it’s also a good idea to learn more about your rights under labor laws. Even if your farm has no paid employees, it’s worth learning more about labor laws.
Here are three references that will help you learn more:
- For a short introduction to agricultural labor laws, start with A guide to agricultural labor laws: How best to comply with the relevant federal and Maryland state standards, by Pons (2014): http://umaglaw.org/publications-library/
- For Maryland-specific agricultural labor laws, read Maryland farm internships and labor laws by Everhart (2016): http://umaglaw.org/publications-library/
- For a longer discussion of how labor laws affect interns and volunteers on sustainability-focused farms, including non-profit farms, read Managing risks of farm interns and volunteers, by Hannum and Armstrong (2016): https://farmcommons.org/resources/managing-risks-interns-and-volunteers%C2%A0