OLIVEIRA, F. I. L.; http://lattes.cnpq.br/3096641132211575; OLIVEIRA, Flávia Iuçara Lourenço de.
Résumé:
Family farming refers to a form of organization of production in which property and work are
directly linked to the family, which is the owner of the production processes and also who
performs the management work. Therefore, the family farmer is directly exposed to
occupational risk situations such as solar radiation, tractor noise, exhausting working hours,
among others. The use of chemical pesticides is routine in agriculture, a dangerous attempt to
improve productivity. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the occupational hazards related to
work in the field and the perspective of the quality of life of farmers in the Municipality of
Sousa-PB. Thus, the work is a field study, descriptive exploratory with a quantitative and
qualitative approach, carried out in the Municipality of Sousa-PB, located in the interior of the
State of Paraíba. The sample consisted of 100 farmers from the municipality, registered in the
rural workers' union. Data collection was carried out through a bank of semi-structured
questions with a sociodemographic approach in the first moment and in the second moment the
instrument containing an approach on the quality of life of the research participants. According
to the results found regarding the sociodemographic characterization of the participants, 62%
were female, aged between 41 years and over 50 years, 40% participants were from the Housing
Nucleus I, 64% brown, 76% married, 41% with incomplete primary education, 65% with family
income less than one minimum wage. Regarding the use of PPE, 38% have been working in
agriculture for over 41 years, 96% know about PPE, 67% always use PPE, 75% do not receive
guidance on the use of PPE, 94% are aware of the existing risks of working in the field , 58%
characterize the environment as risky. About which PPE they use, 93% wear long pants and a
shirt, in relation to the work tool 39.11% use a hoe. As for the occurrence of an accident at
work, 53% presented or present some sign or symptom of disease related to work, 73% do not
have access to information about the existing risks of work in the field, 42% use agricultural
defensive, and about the destination of the container 20% incinerate at the application site, 94%
do not know the triple washing method, 15% reported having suffered an accident at work.
With regard to health problems, symptoms, disabilities and medical care, 33.59% reported low
back pain, 26.67% reported disabilities due to low back pain and 24% sought medical care to
treat low back pain. As for the analysis of quality-of-life Short Form 36 (SF36), the general
health status domain was predominant in 64.99%, followed by the pain aspect in 76.81%,
considering that the scores of the domains range from 0 (zero) to 100 (one hundred), where zero
is the worst score and 100 is the best for each domain. The research carried out aims to stimulate
the knowledge of family farmers, minimizing accidents at work and providing greater security
to field workers, and which can contribute to the advancement of discussions regarding the
working conditions of farmers, presenting data about the occupational risks related to to work
in family farming and the quality of life of farmers in the Municipality of Sousa-PB, as well as
providing subsidies for the construction of public policies for this target audience, focusing on
a new production model and that promote education actions in health for these farmers, through
lectures, courses, training, using educational strategies that minimize occupational exposure
and consequently improve the quality of life of this population.
