In July, the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) presented John Shutske, UW-Madison professor and agricultural safety and health specialist one of its major organizational awards. The award was presented at ASABE’s 2022 international meeting in Houston, Texas
The ASABE Ergonomics, Safety, and Health Award is sponsored by SMV Technologies. The award was presented to recognize Shutske’s 37-years of leadership and interdisciplinary teamwork that focuses on tackling long-accepted problems through Extension, engineering, and education for a safer and healthier agricultural workplace.
Shutske is a faculty member in UW’s Biological Systems Engineering Department where he directs cross-disciplinary research. This work involves other experts in agriculture, medicine, veterinary science, health education, mental health, and engineering. These efforts include research, outreach program development, and classroom teaching focused on injury and health concerns for farmers, farmworkers, children, and agricultural communities. Dr. Shutske also had served as director of UW’s Center for Agricultural Safety and Health in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences from July 2016 to May 2022.
Current priorities by Shutske and his team include education for immigrant dairy farmworkers focused on personal and public health; application of new technologies that reduce farm injury risk; and education on mental health and farm stress including its connection to injury risk, suicide, and physical health. Shutske leads national and international research efforts that focus on engineering risk assessment to improve safety, public policy, insurability, workforce development, and other issues that will help advance farm automation in the future in response to growing concerns about labor availability and cost. He serves as an affiliate professor in UW’s School of Medicine and Public Health and is an instructor and research adviser for the Wisconsin Academy of Rural Medicine with medical students and others in the health professions.
Throughout his career, Shutske has made significant improvements to agricultural workplace safety and health conditions and reduction of property loss. He conducted some of the early research in 1991-92 in child development and its applications in farm injury prevention. This work eventually led to the multi-national development of the North American Guidelines for Children’s Agricultural Tasks, led by the National Farm Medicine Center, one of Shutske’ s many long time collaborators and frequent partners in efforts to protect farmers and their families.
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