California

California AgrAbility had a booth at the 29th Annual Celebration of Farmworker Day in Gridley located in Butte County. The event brought together state, county, and local agencies such as the Department of Pesticide Regulation, University of California Agricultural and Natural Resource Services, Legal Services of Northern California, and more. This event rotates between three Northern California counties each year to reach various farmworking communities.

California AgrAbility conducted outreach at the UC Davis Disability Symposium and Technology Fair on the UC Davis main campus. Staff showcased ergonomic gardening tools to students, staff, and faculty. The symposium session highlighted software applications that can be used to help those living with a disability. Otter was a well-received app that changes speech to text and was even able to pick up the speaker from quite a distance away.

Staff presented AgrAbility at the San Mateo Abilities Expo with their partner agency, Ability Tools, which brought at-home living assistive tools for attendees to learn about devices that could make day to day task easier while living with a disability. Staff was able to showcase ergonomic gardening tools while educating attendees on the risk of chronic illness caused by repetitive motion. The Bahco hand pruners were a huge hit, with many attendees showing tremendous interest in trying and purchasing the tool for their gardening activities.

Hamid Fonooni, director of the ergonomics program in the UC Davis Occupational Health Services Department, presented on ergonomics for the UC Davis Biological and Agricultural Engineering Department. He emphasized the danger of being static. Every 20 minutes a muscle does not move, the muscle essentially is cut off from oxygen and nutrients. This slowly damages the muscle which causes chronic illnesses such as carpal tunnel. He encouraged attendees to move every 20-30 minutes, while also reducing highly repetitive motion.

Submitted by Sara Wat