In an update of an earlier Swedish case-control study, joint space narrowing was two to three times more common in agriculture workers, and more than six times more prevalent among men who had worked as farm labourers for > 30 years. Using a population-based approach, British men aged 60-70 years were sampled from the registration lists of five rural general practices. Subjects with relevant symptoms (who had not had a hip replacement) had a new hip radiograph taken, or a recent one traced. The prevalent of moderate to severe radiographic hip OA (defined as a minimal joint space < 1.5 mm or joint replacement for OA) was found to be higher in 168 farmers than 83 referents who had spent their entire careers in clerical work (OR = 7.8 overall and 9.3 for men with > 10 years in farming). Comparable risk estimates have been found in several other surveys.