Musculoskeletal Disorders, Energy Use, and Costs of Human Labor for Paddy Cultivation in Northern Iran

In this study, musculoskeletal disorders, energy consumption and input costs of paddy labors have been studied in cultivation, crop protection, and harvesting rice in Northern Iran, Guilan province. The sample size of the study consisted of 74 paddy workers of the study region. The data were collected through Nordic questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that the labor input energy of cultivation, crop protection, and harvesting were 674.6, 356.8 and 205.9 MJha-1, respectively. The total labor input costs were determined to be 22,860,000 IRRs ha-1. Lower back, back and knees were the most common areas where paddy workers were feeling pain. There were significant differences among the age, working hours and working years of healthy and relatively healthy poor paddy workers (p