Theory and practice of advisory work in a time of turbulences

Agriculture has known to be one of the most hazardous works in the world. In Korea, there is no government agency fully responsible for management and control of agriculture-related accidents and illness. In order to improve severe health and safety conditions of Korean farmers, the Rural Development Administration (RDA) planned a community-based safe farm zone program in 2005 and have implemented since 2006. The program is the first integrated extension program on agricultural safety and health in South Korea, which is being implemented for 3 years for each village. Total 45 villages were involved in the program by 2009. In the first stage of the program, national task force for operating the safe farm zone project had been launched as follows: the management committee composed of extension specialists of RDA is responsible for project budget establishment, selection of the community participated, evaluation of achievement, and so on. The supervisory committee mostly composed of extensionists, research scientists, and medical staffs is responsible for preparation of overall scheme, action plan, and evaluation tool, and also technical assistance for monitoring the work hazards or medical examination for agricultural hazards-mediated disorder. The educational committee delivers training to focus groups of participant communities and develops educational materials. Communities applying for the project had formed community-wide coalitions composed of farmers, regional research group, local hospitals, local government personnel, regional agro-business companies, and other agriculture-related acting groups. Farmers empowered through training by the educational committee made primary survey of all participant farms' work environment concerning on various aspects of safety and health. Thereafter, the empowered farmers and all participant farmers analyzed problems on the community's safety and health, and designed step-by-step methods to fix or improve the problems by themselves. The intervention program for improving their work environment should have been a feasible approach undertaken by farmers themselves with help from other participant groups in the coalition. Incentives given to the participant farmers were physical examination such lung function test, test for neurological function, cumulative traumatic disorders, and other special tests. The communities also get monitoring of the work hazards such as dust generation, microbiological/agrochemical exposure, noise and vibration, so on. After implementing intervention, the level of improvement in overall agricultural safety and health were evaluated in the end of 2008. It showed that farmers had high satisfaction with the program and their health and safety conditions were considerably improved. In conclusion, the safe farm project was designed to reduce work-related accidents and illnesses in agricultural sector. Major intervention programs were implemented by farmers themselves under co-operation with partner coalition parties. The program made good effect on improving farmers’ health and safety conditions. XIX ESEE: Theory and practice of advisory work in a time of turbulences 16 AGRO – FOOD SYSTEM IN UMBRIA Francesco Diotallevi, Chiara Paffarini, Fabio M. Santucci – University of Perugia, Italy.