ABSTRACT
Agriculture globally encompasses an extremely wide range of activities, jobs, people, and technological settings, and there can be confusion about where the boundaries of this sector lie. Technologically, the degree of agricultural mechanization ranges from the use of human muscle and energy using very basic hand tools, through to automated systems requiring little human interaction except for occasional control operations. The workforce is unusually difcult to dene, especially because the farm is normally a home as well as a workplace. There are marked seasonal uctuations in labor demand, which may be met in a variety of ways. Accordingly, it is a costly and often elusive sector to study. The potential areas of human factors and ergonomics (HF/E) engagement are numerous; they have worldwide relevance and
Practitioner Summary ............................................................................................ 331 Introduction: The Context from an HF/E Perspective ........................................... 332 Subsistence Agriculture ......................................................................................... 333 Small-Scale Commercial Agriculture .................................................................... 334 Large-Scale Commercial (Industrial) Agriculture ................................................. 338 Agricultural Contractors and Other “Labor Units” ................................................340 Achieving Successful HF/E Interventions ............................................................. 342 Key Challenges for HF/E Practitioners in the Agricultural Sector ........................ 343
Diversity of the Target Population ................................................................ 343 Resistance .....................................................................................................344 Need to Collaborate ...................................................................................... 345 Lack of Current and Relevant Research and Development .......................... 345
Conclusions ............................................................................................................346 References .............................................................................................................. 347
could affect up to half the world’s population. Highly participative methodologies have consistently proved to deliver the most successful interventions. For HF/E practitioners to gain credibility in farming communities, we have to offer opportunities for wealth creation (or money saving), faster working (or time saving), or greater comfort (or reduced workload and drudgery).
