Program Aims to Get Farmers to Give Up Baseball Caps for Better Sun Protection

Imagine the farmer in “American Gothic” wearing a pith helmet. Or Kevin Costner sporting a Sherlock Holmes-style deerstalker as he builds his “Field of Dreams.”

The rural fashion scene may never be the same if health officials can persuade farmers to give up their baseball caps for headgear that offers better sun protection.

The National Farm Medicine Center says the caps farmers often receive as gifts from agribusinesses and wear in the fields do little to curb the risk of skin cancer.

The center in central Wisconsin, part of the Marshfield Clinic, is field-testing five alternative hats that have larger brims, but getting farmers to change is a “monumental task,” spokeswoman Barbara Lee said.

She said a survey of 600 farmers who attended the Wisconsin Farm Progress Days exposition last summer found that 46% of them had precancerous skin lesions and 8% had skin cancer.

“It is not a big surprise,” she said. “How many farmers do you look at who don’t have a heavy tan in the summer? If they live long enough, a majority will develop some form of skin cancer.”

Tom Peissig, 37, of Dorchester, is one of five farmers testing the other alternatives: the Sherlock stalker, which has brims fore and aft, a light pith helmet with optional chin strap, a New Zealand fishing hat, a wide-brimmed straw hat and a bucket hat.

He said neighbors have given him a rough time as he tries out the hats.

“At the feed mill, they say, ‘I like this more than the last one you wore,’ ” Peissig said.

But Peissig said he thinks farmers might be persuaded to wear something other than the seed suppliers’ free caps because many are aware of the risk.

Until six months ago, the center gave away baseball caps, too, but realized it was time to practice “what we preach,” Lee said. “The baseball cap has become such an acceptable norm that nobody considered challenging it.”

The tops of ears are especially vulnerable to skin cancer, and that’s why wide-brimmed hats are needed, she said.

The cap study is supported by a $28,000 state grant that also paid for sending 34,000 Wisconsin farmers a free sample of sunscreen lotion, Lee said.

It appears the most workable hat for farmers could be a variation of the baseball hat--one with a long brim in front, a shorter brim in back and optional flaps on the sides, Lee said.

Wide-brimmed styles, such as the straw hat, tend to blow off easily or get in the way when a farmer works on equipment, she said. The $20 pith helmet simply may be too costly, she said.

Farmers like the baseball cap because it’s cool, comfortable, snug-fitting, colorful--and free, she said.

Martin Marlenga, a 34-year-old Catawba dairy farmer, said he has at least 50 of the promotional baseball-style caps. When one cap gets dirty, he throws it aside and grabs a new one.

“You don’t think about skin cancer. I never thought it was one of the major things facing farmers,” he said.