Unseen, Unmanaged, Unsafe: Farming workplaces and occupational risk from co-located energy systems.
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| Title: | Unseen, Unmanaged, Unsafe: Farming workplaces and occupational risk from co-located energy systems. |
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| Authors: | Dougall, Shay D.1,2 (AUTHOR) shay.dougall@connect.qut.edu.au, Gillespie, Josephine3,4 (AUTHOR), Sav, Adem1 (AUTHOR), Ramirez, Javier Cortes1,5 (AUTHOR), Haswell, Melissa R1,4 (AUTHOR), Potter, Rachael6 (AUTHOR), Dollard, Maureen6 (AUTHOR) |
| Source: | Safety Science. Nov2026, Vol. 203, pN.PAG-N.PAG. 1p. |
| Abstract: | • Identifies host farmers as an unrecognised occupational cohort in co-located energy systems. • Reinterprets UG impacts as workplace hazards rather than community or environmental effects. • Demonstrates that existing evidence does not trigger WHS responsibility or intervention. • Reveals governance arrangements that institutionalise unmanaged WHS risk. • Introduces the PSC-PS as a diagnostic framework for psychosocial risk governance. Policies governing unconventional gas (UG) expansion are reshaping agricultural work, creating hybrid workplaces where farming and energy production are co-located. Host farmers, primary producers legally required to accommodate UG infrastructure, constitute a distinct but largely unrecognised occupational cohort within this interface. This study examines how UG co-location alters the organisation and management of farm work, generating psychosocial, physical, and organisational hazards that fall outside the scope of current governance and research. A scoping review was conducted to reinterpret the social science literature on UG impacts through a work health and safety (WHS) lens. This approach enabled the identification and classification of UG-related impacts as workplace hazards, with findings validated using the FOREC framework. The findings show that host farming workplaces are routinely exposed to unmanaged hazards without the protections, controls, or participatory mechanisms afforded to other occupational groups. These risks arise from governance arrangements and contractual structures that shift responsibility for hazard exposure onto farmers. In response, this study introduces the Psychosocial Safety Climate Policy Scorecard (PSC-PS) as a structured framework for assessing how psychosocial risks are recognised and governed within the host farmer–UG interface. By producing a practitioner-facing WHS evidence base, the study establishes a foundation for targeted intervention and risk-based policy reform, highlighting the need to translate existing knowledge into enforceable protections for host farmers in co-located agricultural–industrial systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Engineering Source |
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