Introduction
In literature and the visual arts, the very notion of an idyll means a depiction of rural life, describing life and work on a farm as healthy, gratifying, and in harmony with nature. Children’s books, in particular, abound with rustic idylls where children play freely, undisturbed by the dangers of modern life.
Real farmwork was, and still is, very dissimilar from these representations. Agriculture is more dangerous than most other occupations. Old hazards like sickles and bolting horses may have become less common, but they have been replaced by new ones such as pesticides and tractor rollovers (ILO 2010).
A third of the world’s labor force works in agriculture. In the richer countries, only around 2–3 % of the workforce work on farms, most of them on highly mechanized farms. In poor countries, more than half of the workforce work in agriculture. About 40 % of the world’s farmers and agricultural...
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Hansson, S.O. (2013). Occupational Risks in Agriculture. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_318-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_318-2
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