It is not new news that agriculture has excessive worker injury rates. Nor that senior farmers and adult farmers in the South experience some of the highest occupational injury and mortality in the nation. There were an estimated 58,385 work-related adult farm injuries (more than six every hour) in 2014. In 2016, 417 farmers and farm workers died from a work-related injury. Reaching farmers with safety and health information can be challenging. Farmers are seldom in the same place; they are used to working in isolation and taking care of their own safety; and they have little time to be away from the farm and their work. So how do we break though to this high-risk group with safety and health information? NIOSH grantee, Deborah Reed, PhD, a nurse at the University of Kentucky has a new idea that appears to be taking off. The farm dinner theater is a program funded by NIOSH through a research project grant. This project works with established community- based Cooperative Extension Agents in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Mississippi to develop and test a theater intervention aimed at positively changing farm work culture and safety behavior.
The theater uses a didactic reader format where participants read from scripts. Dr. Reed partners with County level cooperative Extension Services to develop scripts on topics relevant to their communities. Examples include falls, hearing conservation, skin cancer, intergenerational issues of work, equipment operation and reaction time, livestock handling, and virtually any topic related to the farming community. Local actors and farmers put on the plays. With advertising on local radio and in newspapers, the organizers try to create a buzz around the dinner theater event and want it to be a night out for farmers and their families.