Farm life has many benefits to a person's overall health and well-being, but it also has its own repercussions. For children, living on farms has exposed them to agriculture-related injuries or accidents and worse -- death.
A report from the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety (NCCRAHS) released in July 2016 found that thousands of children under 20 years old are injured on farms annually, the USA Today Network-Wisconsin reported (via Marshfield News-Herald). Plenty of those agriculture-related injuries occurred in the Midwest, which comprises the states of Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, and Kansas, among others.
Children living on farms die due to an agriculture-related accident every three days. Those deaths average approximately 110 each year nationwide for the past 20 years. Bryan Weichelt, a researcher observing children's injuries and deaths related to agriculture and farming, said this is because farms are "littered with potential hazards," the news outlet further reported.
Despite this death rate, the report found that fewer children are sustaining injuries on farms in recent years. In 1998, 16.6 youth were injured per 1,000 farms. That rate lowered by 5.7 in 2014, according to Marsha Salzwedel, a colleague of Weichelt at the NCCRAHS.
Majority of children's deaths on farms are caused by vehicles such as tractors and skid-steers. Kids' injuries were majorly from vehicles and farm animals.
Children on farms often perform basic farm chores like feeding the cows and cleaning manure. Parents allow their kids to help out in some tasks, but they also make sure to keep an eye on their children all the time and keep the youngsters by their side constantly. This way, parents can introduce their love for farming to their children and bond with them at the same time.
Since 1997, the NCCRAHS has been developing and promoting initiatives that will boost safety in farms to decrease the number of injuries and deaths among children. Some of the center's initiatives are keeping children younger than 14 from tractors, providing a guide for parents about agriculture tasks that are suitable for children, and encouraging the creation of play areas surrounded by fences. The latter allows kids to be out on the farm but ensures that they are far from machinery, animals, and other safety hazards.
As for the benefits of living on farms, experts believe that being exposed to farm animals and the microbes they carry lowers the asthma risk of children, the Los Angeles Times reported. Low asthma attacks and allergic reactions were seen in Amish children living in traditional farming families in Indiana.
