In the United States, upper extremity injuries account for about 22% of all lost time injuries that occurred on farms in 1995 (Meyers et al.2000). Gomez et al. (2003) reported a prevalence of 28% for hand/wrist trouble among 1,700 farmers.
Upper extremity injuries have plagued dairy farmers with 27% of all injuries being attributed to this region (Pratt et al. 1992) and tobacco farmers with 25% (Struttmann and Reed 2002). Based on a Swedish study, hand and wrist injuries are
also prevalent on dairy farms with 51% of female dairy farmers suffering an injury (Stal 2000). Shoulder pain in the previous year was found to be greater in farming (14%) than either other manual labor (9.7%) or non-manual labor (7.1%) jobs (Walker-Bone and Palmer 2002).