Pre-Survey Letter

United States Department of Agriculture
National Agricultural Statistics Service

August 1, 2012
Dear Producer,
On-farm injuries to youth declined between 2001 and 2009 but remain a cause for concern.
In 2009, youth who lived on, worked on, or visited a farm sustained 15,876 injuries. Adults
working on U.S. farms and ranches in 2004 experienced 80,300 work-related injuries and
464 deaths. To better understand the causes of these injuries, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and
the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service
(NASS) are once again teaming up to conduct a survey of U.S. farms and ranches.
In August, a trained NASS interviewer will call you along with thousands of other farmers
and ranchers around the country to ask about injuries that occurred in 2011. The goals are
to:




Estimate the number of injuries to youth on U.S. farms and ranches,
Estimate the number of adult work-related injuries on U.S. farms and ranches, and
Document the type of events that led to these injuries.

The enclosed brochure shows results from a similar survey of youth and adult farm injuries
from 2003 to 2007. The new data will help the USDA Extension Service, health
organizations, and others develop programs and educational materials aimed at preventing
on-farm injuries in the future.
Your cooperation in the survey is voluntary, but be assured that all information collected will
be completely confidential, as required by federal law. NASS safeguards the privacy of all
respondents, ensuring that no individual operation can be identified, and will remove any
identifying information before presenting the survey findings to the Centers for Disease
Control.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation. For more information on this survey, or to find
results from similar studies, visit www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/agriculture/ or call
(888) 424-7828.
Sincerely,

Hubert Hamer
Chairperson
NASS Agricultural Statistics Board
(Enclosure)