“Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country, and wedded to its liberty and interests, by the most lasting bonds.”

—Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson’s perception has largely been replaced by other interpretations, but the perception remains unchanged that the agriculture, forestry, and fishing (AFF) workforce engages in noble activity that secures the nation’s present and future fate. These populations deserve to work in environments that contribute to the production of safe consumer products and that protect their health. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is to be commended for its keen desire to respond to decades of evidence suggesting that the AFF workforce experiences some of the highest occupational disease and injury rates.

Congressional mandates regarding worker health and safety in agriculture, forestry, and fishing date back only 2 decades for agriculture and just over 3 decades for fishing. Yet, the interest of safety specialists, hygienists, engineers, public health professionals, clinicians, and policymakers dates back to the 1940s, when the war effort demanded an able, fit workforce to produce food and fiber for the allied armed forces. Drawing on that long tradition, NIOSH forged an agricultural occupational safety and health agenda in response to the 1990 congressional mandate. Using public health approaches, the NIOSH Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing Research Program (AFF Program) attempted to respond to worksites risks and hazards numbering more than 3 million, a complex collage of child and adult worker exposures, technological change unseen before in the history of human labor in extractive industries, unprecedented public policy gyrations, and emerging genomic capability. En route, it conducted surveillance, deployed an innovative regionalized system for the conduct of useful research and outreach activity, nourished a generation of scientists and occupational health clinicians, and developed useful linkages with organizations and entities that share a workforce safety and health agenda. Now, under the guidance of the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine, it is time to pause, assemble results, analyze program outcomes, and reflect for the future.

The committee’s composition was broad, reflecting both the diverse nature of the three industry sectors covered by the NIOSH AFF Program and the diversity of occupational exposures experienced by workers in the sectors (see Appendix D). Its professional skill set spanned from agricultural engineering to agricultural extension and education, from clinical medicine to epidemiology, from anthropology to physics, and from occupational hygiene to occupational safety. The committee is due a full measure of gratitude for its selfless pursuit of its charge and its review of published materials, other resources, and a large body of fugitive facts, publications, and other materials. It has been dogged in such activity, intent on securing that which would enable it to discharge its mandate. To each member: a generous measure of thanks is due for carrying this heavy load, all the while maintaining a helpful demeanor and a charitable sense of humor and continuing to discharge normal professional activity.

Not enough good can be said about staff assembled for this task by the Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources. Always attentive, yet working under intense time pressure, these professionals ably discharged both the exciting and the mundane, responded to the committee’s numerous entreaties, patiently recruited experts capable of assisting the committee, assembled background materials, and maintained liaison with a large number of agencies and organizations. The committee would have been useless without their assistance, and to them an enormous amount of gratitude is due.

This program evaluation has been difficult. The worksite complexity and demographic makeup of the at-risk workforce is unprecedented, in terms of both NIOSH program evaluation and worker health and safety programming across North America. That NIOSH or other affected organizations or entities were not always able to produce documentation is made all the more understandable once the breadth of these combined sectors is grasped. Nevertheless, the committee was not timid in formulating useful recommendations for program improvement across future timeframes, and it believes that its present assessment reflects the best evidence marshaled to date of AFF worker outcomes in response to an occupational safety and health program mandated by Congress.

The committee persevered in the belief that this nation’s AFF workforce deserves the best protection from risk that the nation can provide. Its work was launched in the belief that that workforce is vitally important for the nation’s future. To that workforce the committee dedicates its analyses reported herein.

Paul D. Gunderson

Committee Chair