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Dusk cultivate definition3/24/2024 ![]() ![]() ![]() What is the Current Lighting Standard?Ĭurrent lighting standards require all tractors or ATVs used between an hour after sunset or an hour before sunrise to be equipped with at least one headlight that illuminates 50 feet. This is especially true if workers are picking up a second shift or working longer hours. The disruption of family life and social activities can lead to poor diet, stress, and lack of exercise. Night shift work has been shown in construction and hospital work to negatively affect health, including interruption of hormone release cycles, low immune response, cardiovascular disease, and miscarriage. This disruption in the internal timing system and the physiological maladaptation to an inverted schedule can result in a variety of health and performance problems in workers, reduced quality of sleep, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal disorders, reproductive dysfunction in women, and an increase in fatigue-related accidents.” In a 2010 article in Ergonomics, WCAHS investigator, Fadi Fathallah, PhD, cautions that night workers “undergo an inversion of this 'natural' cycle by sleeping during daylight hours and working during night or dark hours. Other risks include greater exposure to nocturnal animals and even criminal activity if lighting is poor. Many safety risks of night work in agriculture are the same as the risks of daytime work, but they may be exacerbated by night conditions, such as limited visibility due to poor lighting or fatigue due to the disruption of biological rhythms leading to trips, falls, or collisions. While more growers may be adopting nighttime work, there is concern that insufficient awareness of the hazards associated with night work puts agricultural workers at risk. For example, the Bureau of Labor Statistics public records report the time of non-fatal injury by fixed time frames that cross day- and nighttime hours (e.g., 4 pm to 8 pm), making it difficult to determine how many accidents occur in the dark or how many accidents occurred from actual farm work versus transportation to and from the work site. Standard databases provide limited information. “The area’s cool nights create better working conditions-not only is the temperature more tolerable, but bees and rattlesnakes stay away at night” explains Lino Bozzano, VP of Vineyard Operation, in the Laetitia Vineyard and Winery blog, “ Why We Harvest Fruit At Night.” Head Winemaker, Eric Hickey adds that “grapes are firmer, making them easier to work with.”Ĭurrently, very little quantitative information is available on night work in agriculture, such as how many growers have adopted the practice, the kind of work being done at night versus the day, and how growers address nighttime health and safety risks. Possible reasons include rising temperatures and heat illness prevention regulations, increasing labor shortages, product quality and taste preferences, time-sensitive harvests, and avoidance of pests. The general, unofficial consensus among a number of professionals involved in agriculture is that night work is increasing. Harvest, equipment transportation, set up, and maintenance as well as field prep and repairs, irrigation work, and pesticide application are other activities done at night. Across the West, a variety of crops are harvested at night, such as wine grapes, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and corn. ![]() Farming doesn’t stop just because the sun sets. ![]()
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