Estimating the Burden of Serious Farm-Related Injury in Minnesota

Minnesota was ranked 6th in the United States for total sales of agricultural product, with just over $13 billion in sales in the year 2011. Only 1.1% of Minnesotas workforce was employed in agriculture for the year 2011. However, this small portion of Minnesotas workforce has one of the highest work-related fatality rates, with 28 (40%) of the 70 work-related deaths that occurred in the year 2010 associated with agriculture. While the number of agricultural fatalities that have occurred in Minnesota is well documented and counted, the number of non-fatal injuries is not. To address this issue the Minnesota hospital discharge data set was used to create counts, rates, and trends of agricultural injury for the years 2000-2011. These counts were used with the Cost of Illness model to create estimates of the economic burden of agricultural injuries in Minnesota for the years 2004-2010.