Ag News

National Farm Safety & Health Week: Safety first, avoid the worst

The 2025 National Farm Safety & Health Week continues through Sept. 27, following the theme “Safety First, Avoid the Worst.”

Fall harvest time can be one of the busiest and most dangerous seasons of the year for the agriculture industry. For this reason, each year since 1944, the third week of September has been recognized as National Farm Safety & Health Week. This recognition has been an annual promotion initiated by the National Safety Council and has been proclaimed as such by each sitting U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Each day during the week, attention is focused on a specified topic. For Sept. 25, the topic is confined spaces in agriculture, dealing with things like grain bin safety, entrapment and suffocation scenarios. For Sept. 26, the topic is ATV/UTV safety.

Earlier this week, the topic for Sept. 22 was equipment and rural roadway safety, the Sept. 23 topic was health and wellness, and the Sept. 24 topic centered on generations of farming.

The US Ag Centers promote the theme “Working to keep farm families, workers and everyone involved in agriculture safe and healthy” to emphasize the importance of the health and well-being of the people working in agriculture.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the agricultural sector in 2019 was the most dangerous in America with 573 fatalities, or an equivalent of 23.1 deaths per 100,000 workers.

National Farm Safety and Health Week is led by the National Education Center for Agricultural Safety (NECAS), the agricultural partner of the National Safety Council.

For more information about National Farm Safety & Health Week, visit https://umash.umn.edu/national-farm-safety-and-health-week-2025/.

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