The IEA Agriculture Ergonomics Track (formerly the Primary Industries Technical Committee) is now accepting submissions for the IEA 2009 Congress in Beijing, China. This Track calls for proposals for symposia, panels, workshops, field demonstrations and papers that address current or emerging issues in agriculture, horticulture, forestry, viticulture and any other land-based industries. In particular we are interested in proposals related to any of the following topics:

    •  Ergonomic applications in production agriculture
    •  Ergonomic applications in labor-intensive agriculture
    •  Agricultural machinery and equipment design and safety
    •  New technologies in agriculture
    •  Agricultural health and safety
    •  Special populations in agriculture: youths, elderly, migrant and seasonal workers, etc.

The interest of this track also cover other predominantly rural occupations including fishing and the transportation and primary processing of produce – for example log truck driving, initial seafood processing and sawmill work.

The content of these offerings could include case studies, reports of laboratory research, and descriptions of field methods, conceptual models, evaluations, implementation approaches and intervention programme design. Demonstrations or examples of new products/tools/software/methods that have had impact in addressing common ergonomics problems or livelihood issues in these industries would also be very welcome.

In particular, we are looking for contributions covering novel methods of qualitative and quantitative data collection in the field, and also any presentations that discuss methods for the reliable evaluation of intervention effectiveness in rural communities.

Abstracts must be submitted to the IEA Congress website, www.iea2009.org. Please email us if you have any questions: fathallah@ucdavis.edu or dave.moore@cohfe.co.nz.