Create a Safety Culture on Your Farm

Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Identify & address hazards to minimize long-term exposure

By Emily McKinlay

The fast-paced nature of farming often leaves little time to consider the hazards associated with the profession. Many producers watch family members and employees grow into lifelong roles on the operation, and this can be an opportunity to assess the risks and create a culture of safety to keep everyone safe.

Noise, dust, chemicals, sun exposure, and repetitive movement are just a few hazards that are present on nearly all farms.

“Almost all tasks on the farm contribute to these hazards,” says Ryan Dick, a farmer and a health and safety consultant for Workplace Safety & Prevention Services.

Morag Marjerison, a farm safety consultant for FarmSafe Manitoba, says that the ill effects of these hazards can be difficult to quantify, due to the long-term nature of the exposures.

“It can be difficult to track because people may have done many different jobs throughout their lives,” says Marjerison.

“When a farmer has a health challenge, we often don’t hear about it or don’t connect it back to what they did before.”

Sometimes health challenges related to on-farm hazards don’t appear for decades.

To stay healthy and continue farming for years to come, producers could use the winter months to assess the hazards prevalent on their farms and create a plan to prioritize health.

Identifying hazards

Many farm hazards are obvious. While the most prominent risks on the farm are easy to spot, some less obvious, repetitive risks may be overlooked. The effects of these hazards might not be noticed until the damage has been done.

Producers should make time to take inventory of the farm tasks they complete daily or seasonally and think about the associated hazards.

“Noise is a common hazard on all farms. Hearing loss is permanent – it doesn’t get better again over time,” says Marjerison.

“The damage is gradual and painless, so many farmers don’t recognize they are doing harm when they don’t experience any problems on the day of the exposure. When they are busy, farmers may not be consciously thinking about noise levels. They should always be using hearing protection above 85 dB.”

Marjerison recommends using a sound meter app on a smartphone to measure sound levels throughout the operation and gain a better understanding of how loud tasks can get – especially with cumulative noise.

“In yards at harvest, there are often multiple pieces of equipment running with tractors, trucks, and augers,” says Marjerison.

“These cumulative activities can make noise levels immense, but we are often not focusing on that. Every individual noise increases the decibel level.”

Dust and moulds are also common when handling grain, fertilizer, forages, and animals.

“Dust from grain and animal dander can cause chronic bronchitis and asthma,” says Dick.

“With farmer’s lung, mould can be in the air when cleaning out old silos, tidying hay mows, and when doing barn cleanouts in the spring. The first exposure to mouldy hay spores can create a minor allergic reaction, but with long-term exposure, the lungs can actually damage themselves.”

Farmers also perform significant manual labour. Repetitive movements, prolonged holding of awkward positions, and extended vibration can put farmers at risk of musculoskeletal disorders.

“With a lot of repetitive movements and lifting, lower back pain and arthritis are much more common in farmers,” says Dick.

“Whole body vibration can worsen musculoskeletal disorders. It causes the muscles to work harder to stabilize the body, resulting in muscle fatigue, and increasing the likelihood of muscle strain when lifting.

“Farmers are exposed to a lot of whole-body vibration on equipment, and that can also stress the inner ear, worsening the damage from loud noises and reducing the chance to recuperate from them. Simply being on the tractor can further contribute to hearing loss.”

Chemical exposure and sun exposure are also common hazards for farmers.

Exposure to chemicals doesn’t always have an instantaneous effect, so the perceived risk might be minimized. Over the long term, repeated exposures can be carcinogenic or cause respiratory issues.

Marjerison says that sun damage can also have cumulative effects that aren’t often recognized until the damage has been done.

“We don’t often see these ill health effects until they are irreversible.”

Fortunately, you can protect yourself from many of these risks.

Limiting risk

Before creating a strategy to limit risk, farmers need to assess which hazards exist on their farm.

“You don’t know what’s going to harm you until you look at the risks,” says Dick.

“If you identify where respiratory, noise, and chemical hazards exist, then you can then put controls in place to minimize them. In the same way that we walk fences to locate weak areas, you can walk your farm for hazards.”

Once these hazards are identified, farm owners should draft safe work procedures to ensure all farm members are on the same page.

“If three different people are doing one task throughout the year, they should all be doing it the same way, so they know how to control the risks and how to do the job safely,” says Dick.

Marjerison says personal protective equipment (PPE) should be ready before it’s needed.

Specific PPE will vary by farm, but disposable coveralls for chemical handling, dust masks, gloves, hearing protection, and safety goggles are just a few examples of common equipment that should be in stock.

“Before the busy season starts, get stocked up,” says Marjerison.

“Having protective equipment readily available and in stock makes people more likely to use it when needed.”

Dick emphasizes that PPE should be secondary to other safety measures and that it should be appropriate for the task and fit correctly to effectively minimize risk.

“PPE should never be used as a primary line of defence. It should be used in conjunction with other controls,” says Dick.

“Out of all ways to control hazards, PPE is the least reliable. It needs proper training, and farmers need to don and take care of the equipment.

“We want to see PPE used all the time, but we also want to look for better ways to control that hazard like elimination, substitution, or an engineered solution.”

Equipment like N95 masks needs to be assessed to ensure proper fit. Dick notes that facial hair commonly interferes with the seal of N95 masks.

Producers should also be conscious of the time spent sitting in a tractor, doing repetitive motions or lifting heavy objects.

“Farmers operate tractors for long periods of time, so it’s important to get out of the tractor to release that tension,” says Dick.

He recommends getting out to stretch for one minute every hour, which cumulates in an overall reduction in sitting time throughout a busy work week. Dick also suggests investing in improvements to cab comfort, like a seat with better shock absorption or new cab mounts.

Most measures that reduce risk on farm are common sense, but they are only beneficial if used regularly, properly, and by everyone. Sometimes, farm owners need to lead by example to encourage the people they work with to consider their own safety.

“If everybody talks the talk and models good behaviour, then the one person who doesn’t want to will typically get on board,” says Marjerison.

“Families can have good conversations about safety. If parents are modelling good behaviour, that typically leads to better behaviour from younger generations.”

Modelling risk-reduction measures is just one way farm owners can create a culture of safety.

Creating a safety culture

A new approach can make a job safer, but in the busy schedules of the farm, it is common to minimize risk and forego safety measures to get through a task more efficiently.

“I think there is a problem with complacency, or perhaps not recognizing that those long-term exposures are a problem, and people get used to not doing the necessary safety measures,” says Marjerison.

“None of them is too difficult to do. They are habits we should all get into.”

And it starts with education. “My father taught me how to farm the way he was taught by his father,” says Dick.

“He never worked for anyone else and was a self-employed farmer his whole life, so unless he went seeking out new information, no one educated him on these hazards.”

Marjerison says that setting an example should start early. “Often, there are children on farms who are potentially damaging their hearing from a young age. If you get them accustomed to using hearing protection, then they will grow up doing it without thinking about it.”

Dick emphasizes the importance of training both employees and family members involved on the farm about the hazards. This should include discussion about the delayed or cumulative health challenges that some farm hazards can cause.

“One of the biggest challenges is the lack of understanding when we’ve been hurt by long-term exposure,” says Dick.

“If we are cut by a knife or trip from a tractor cab, you have that pain to tell you that you are hurt, but you may not understand the hurt from years of gasoline or chemical exposure on skin or years of noise. You may do something wrong every day, but not know until farther down the road.” BF