Farmers and ranchers participate in one of the most hazardous industries around, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, that doesn’t make it any easier when tragic accidents occur — especially when they involve the life of a child.
According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, a 5-year-old boy passed away after falling from, and being run over by, the tractor he was riding in on Sunday.
Reports state that the vehicle, a John Deere 8230 was being driven along a gravel roadway on private property in Lincoln County, Missouri. by Steven B. Keiser. Reports also said that the tractor’s door was ajar.
The boy, riding as a passenger, was ejected and run over by the tractor. He was pronounced dead by the Lincoln County EMS.
The MHSP later told Newsweek: “We are not seeking any criminal charges.”
Agriculture is a dangerous occupation. The U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics reports a rate of 23 work-related deaths per 100,000 workers in the agricultural industry — seven times that of the national average.
Although there is no national repository for youth-related agricultural injuries, the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety’s 2020 fact sheet says that a child dies in agriculture-related accident every three days. Every day, 33 others are injured.
Of the leading sources of fatalities among all youth, 47 percent involved transportation (including tractors).
A simple search confirms that fact. Just this week, the Daily Voice reported that an 18-month-old girl was killed in a farming accident in Central Pennsylvania involving a skidsteer. Just a few weeks ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported the death of an 8-year-old boy on a dairy farm. Earlier this year, a farming accident hospitalized two young children in Georgia who were entrapped in a cotton module builder.
According to the Childhood Agricultural Injuries 2020 Fact Sheet, 893,000 youth lived on farms in 2014. And, more than half of them worked on the farms.
“Too often in agriculture, we become overly familiar in our surroundings; our workplace is usually the backyard after all. And it’s easy to overlook how some of the greatest dangers rural youth may ever face is right there at home,” wrote Jaclyn Krymowski when addressing keeping farm kids safe in a recent AGDAILY article.
