Because the concept of health in agrarian philosophy is nearly synonymous withability to work, it seems likely that diseases having little immediate impact on afarmers ability to work may be ignored until they have progressed to a disabling state.In order to develop effective health and safety programs to reduce the burden of illnessand injury among farmers, it is important to understand the relationship between theirbeliefs about prevention and their actual safety practices. In this study, 300 farmers incentral Missouri were surveyed to identify beliefs and practices regarding theprevention of respiratory diseases, noise induced hearing loss, and skin cancer. For eachproblem, farmers who expressed concern about the problem and who also believed itwas preventable were more likely to report taking preventive measures than were thosewho did not believe the disease was preventable, those who were not concerned aboutit, or both. Understanding the beliefs, values, and concerns of a population is one of themost important steps in assessing its health needs and a fundamental precursor toplanning health and safety programs. Based on findings from this study, threerecommendations are made for the development of health promotion programs toreduce agricultural health and injury problems.
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Wadud et al. (1998) studied this question.