Unless you simply don’t watch TV, you’ve probably seen an episode of the game show "Family Feud." Producers survey 100 people on various topics, and then one family tries to guess more of the top responses from those surveys than the other family they're competing against. How do you think typical contestants would fare if Steve Harvey, the show's host, asked this question?

“We asked 100 people to name the occupation in America where most people die on the job. Six answers are on the board. What is your answer?”

What occupations would contestants guess? Law enforcement, sanitation worker, maybe a highway worker? If someone said "agriculture," and it popped up on the board as one of the most frequent answers, the entire audience would likely be shocked. Yet that’s exactly where it belongs.

Bill Field, Purdue University farm safety specialist, recently issued a report titled "2016 Summary of U.S. Agricultural Confined Space-related Injuries and Fatalities." There were 60 such cases documented in 2016, and half of those cases involved fatalities.

In fact, Field notes on the website Agricultural Confined Spaces that agriculture as an industry averages more deaths per 100,000 workers than any other industry. That conclusion is based on the National Safety Council Injury Facts report from 2012, he says. Other sources say the distinction belongs to other industries, but agriculture ranks in the top 10 on almost everyone’s list.

The 2012 report pegged the death rate in agriculture at 29 people per 100,000 workers. What’s disturbing is that this rate was 10 times the rate for the average of all industries in the U.S. That’s 10 times — as in, not even close!

More than mining
Just considering confined-space fatalities alone, there were 30 fatal ag incidents in 2016, and only nine fatalities in mining incidents. In 2015, there were 27 fatalities in mining and 24 fatalities in confined spaces in agriculture. The uptick in 2016, with three times more deaths in confined spaces in agriculture than in mining, was the first time more people died in ag confined spaces than in mining since 2009.

Overall, agriculture is typically ranked among the most dangerous occupations in the U.S. Others in the hunt include mining, commercial fishing, logging and roofing. You can find lists that claim more people die in other industries than in agriculture. Nevertheless, Field says farming remains a dangerous occupation. Part of what Field does with the Purdue University Confined Agricultural Spaces Incident Database is document both fatal and nonfatal cases that occur in confined spaces in agriculture.

One of the first steps to reducing incidents is to recognize how dangerous some of these situations can be. One reason agriculture may not be listed as high as a deadly profession in some reports is that there is no required reporting of ag accidents, Field says. Farms, except very large ones, are exempt from Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements. This includes an exemption for activities that occur when handling grain on the farm. If a farm has more than 11 employees, OSHA standards could apply.

The answer to reducing deaths in agriculture isn’t enforcing OSHA standards on every farm. Information from the Agricultural Confined Spaces website indicates that could easily be cost-prohibitive.

The more sensible solution is recognizing the dangers and taking common-sense actions to prevent putting yourself or employees in harm’s way. It’s the only way the alarming statistics related to agricultural injuries and deaths will ever go down.