A Method to Quantify the Detailed Risk of Serious Injury in Agricultural Production

Agricultural injuries are a valuable social sustainability indicator. However, currentmethods use sector-scale production data, so are unable to assess the impact of changes in individualfarming practices. Here, we developed a method that adopts a life cycle approach to quantify thenumber of serious injuries during agricultural production processes and assess the potential impact ofchanges in agricultural practices. The method disaggregates agricultural production into operationsand estimates the contribution each operation makes to the frequency of different types of injuries.The method was tested using data collected by survey during an expert workshop in which sixteenparticipants were asked to estimate the parameters related to typical dairy cattle and pig farms.Parameter estimates for specific operations varied considerably between participants, so normalizedvalues were used to disaggregate sector-scale statistics to production operations. The results were ingeneral agreement with the results from other studies. Participants found it challenging to quantifythe potential effect of new technologies. Provided suitable empirical statistical data are available,the method can be used to quantify the risk of injury associated with individual products and providean ex-ante assessment of future developments in farming practices