Agricultural Worker Safety and Health 2021

Dear Colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that I invite you to contribute to this Special Issue of Safety with an emphasis on agricultural worker safety and health 2021.

Agricultural workers are essential in ensuring a safe and sustainable food supply. Given the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, many efforts have changed in adjusting to new practices, trainings, and work environment to meet workers’ safety needs. The National Occupational Research Agenda for Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing has identified that the task of reducing injury risks to workers in the agriculture subsector may lie in utilizing interventions targeting leadership/system safety approaches, safety culture, work organization, or management. According to the National Land-Grant Research and Extension Agenda for Agricultural Safety and Health, the farm and ranch workforce is diversified in terms of culture, ethnicity, age, gender, and level of education, making a singular approach to safety education and training impractical.

As this diverse agricultural workforce is exposed to numerous safety hazards, this Special Issue offers researchers and clinicians an opportunity to present the latest advancements in the development of training, engineering tools, interventions, or specially designed programs for the evaluation or the enhancement of farmers’ and farm workers’ safety.

Topics of interest include the following concepts:

• Interventions targeting safety management practices on worker safety;
• Interventions evaluating the use of emerging technology such as automated/semi-automated vehicles, robotics, and unmanned aerial vehicles to reduce hazard exposure;
• Interventions aimed at improving worker safety in commonly shared work areas through the following:
  • environment monitors
  • decontamination
  • ventilation
• Evaluation of alternative delivery methodologies of safety training (computer, web-based, peer-lead, etc.) to meet social distancing challenges;
• Assessment of culturally sensitive safety resources.

Dr. Michael Pate
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Safety is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.