Farmers face record ‘unsafe’ days as temperatures rise, study says. What does it mean?
Farmers are just one of the many groups of essential workers we depend on for food during the coronavirus pandemic, but a new study shows their already harsh working conditions will worsen over the coming decades as climate change drives temperatures to skyrocket.
It’s one of a few studies to dive into the well-being of farmers in a changing climate to help bring employers and workers one step ahead of future conditions, the researchers said in their paper published in April in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
“Both the vulnerability of agricultural workers and the rate and scale of climate change are the result of large structural issues that will not be solved with a single silver bullet,” Michelle Tigchelaar, the study’s lead author and a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University, told Grist. “One thing that immediately needs to happen though is for states and the federal government to include heat in their occupational health standards for outdoor workers.”
About 1 million people are officially employed in the U.S. to pick agricultural crops, but the researchers say that number actually stands at more than 2 million, according to a press release on Science Daily.
Farmers already have low wages, less health coverage and vulnerable illegal work statuses in the U.S., making them less likely to seek medical care when needed, but studies to date have really only focused on crop yield projections, the researchers said.
Intense exposure to heat is the norm for crop pickers, but excessive periods under the sun can cause heat exhaustion, heat cramps and heat strokes, according to WebMD. When hot, the body tries to cool itself by rushing blood to the surface of your skin, taking it away from your brain, muscles and other organs.
“This can interfere with both your physical strength and your mental capacity, leading, in some cases, to serious danger,” the website said.
The team from the University of Washington and Stanford University used projections from climate models to learn what future temperatures will look like in agricultural hotpots.
These spots include counties in California, Washington, Oregon and Florida, according to the release.
Today, the average farmer experiences 21 days a year with temperatures exceeding “workplace safety standards,” the researchers said, which is typically any temperature above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
But climate models predict global warming by 2 degrees Celsius, which will double the number of unsafe days to 39 a season by 2050, the researchers said.
And by 2100, farmers can expect 62 unsafe days, or triple the amount, if temperatures increase by 4 degrees Celsius.
“I was surprised by the scale of the change,” said Tigchelaar, who was inspired to do the study after a 28-year-old blueberry picker in Washington died after an exceptionally hot summer in 2017.
“And we think that’s a low estimate,” she added.
The study also revealed that heat waves —periods of three or more peak hot days— will happen five times more often in a world with 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the release in Science Daily said.
As of today, only California and Washington have a “formal policy that aims to protect workers from exposure to severe heat,” Grist reported, but advocates have recently been pushing for nationwide safety measures.
“The four adaptation strategies [the study authors] considered were working significantly less vigorously, taking longer breaks, wearing thinner and more breathable protective clothing, and taking breaks in a cooled shelter,” according to the release.
“The people who are the most vulnerable are asked to take the highest risk so that we, as consumers, can eat a healthy, nutritious diet,” Tigchelaar said.
