FARM Safety Week is hardly a celebration; it is more of an urgent, annual warning to everyone on the land about our state – and our country’s – ability to significantly reduce accidents and the death toll on farms.
This year – the week began on Monday and runs to Sunday – the figures have showed a declining death rate for the second year running.
This is a fantastic step forward, but from a very poor position.
New national agricultural health and safety statistics for 2021 reveal a reduction in on-farm deaths for the second year running. New data shows they have decreased from 58 in 2020, to 46 in 2021 – with tractors now the leading cause of harm, overtaking quad bikes.
But as promising as those statistics are, behind them there is a tragic, seldom seen story.
Children who live on NSW farms are at greater risk of injury and death than their parents or other farm workers.
Sadly, the under-16 age group is one of the most vulnerable to work-related farm accidents in NSW. Children visiting our farms account for 20 per cent of all child deaths on farms and across the board, children account for almost one in five deaths on-farm.
Children learn by imitation. If you practice and value farm safety, so will your child.
The theme for this year safety week is ‘Recipe for Averting Disaster’ and it will focus on a number of intangible risks and hazards such as fatigue, complacency, the blurred line between home and work environment, labour shortages and the ageing workforce, wellbeing and many other issues that combine to make Australian farms one of the most dangerous work environments.
I urge everyone connected in any way with farming in NSW to make sure they access the reports from Farmsafe Australia and AgHealth Australia and try to get involved in Farm Safety Week activities in your district – and take the lessons home for family and staff and let’s keep pushing those figures down.
