Agricultural Machinery Safety Behavior Among Youth

Abstract

The Supervised Agricultural Experience Safety Award program was launched with Montana, South Dakota, and Utah agriculture teachers. A combination of video conferencing and in-person training workshops were offered to school-based agriculture teachers in Montana, South Dakota, and Utah. Zoom webinar workshops were held with teachers during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The five annual training topics were Year 1) Tractor/Equipment Roll over hazards, Year 2) ATV/UTV operation hazards, Year 3) Tractor/Equipment Operation Hazards, Year 4) PTO/Entanglement hazards, and Year 5) agricultural machinery transport hazards associated with use on public roadways. To assess the influence of agricultural machinery safety training on students’ student work-based, journal reflections were collected through the Agricultural Experience Tracker to qualitatively describe students’ production-based agricultural experiences as coded by NASS Commodity codes, describe students’ safety reporting using Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) journal entries, and quantify teachers’ workshop participation as related to student safety reporting. A total of 2215 journal entries were reviewed from Montana, Utah, and South Dakota. A total of 905 journal entries were associated with a teacher participating in the training program. Most student journal entries focused on machinery operations. A total of 80 journal entries specifically reported safety as the main topic. A total of 204 journal entries reported the use of tractors. A total of 82 entries (25.1%) noted Hay production as the agricultural production work experience. The results provide recommendations for developing an application model for translation using an FFA Award structure.