Farm Safety Week: Do it for the children

With new data showing on-farm injury and deaths are on the rise, now is the time to think about how to best protect kids on-farm.

Taking time to review safety on-farm is an opportunity to protect your children both now and in the next generation.

That’s the message from FarmSafe Australia’s chair Felicity Richards, who reflected on her own farming practice and the safety of her three young children.

It comes as this week’s FarmSafe Australia’s safety awareness week hones in on vehicle and machinery, with new data pointing to tractors as a lead cause of on-farm fatalities.

Ms Richards said shifting perspectives about farming safety was paramount for the next generation.

“We have three kids. And it’s been quite confronting looking at these statistics and thinking wow, this is my family and I’m raising them in a dangerous industry,” Ms Richards said.

FarmSafe Australia chair Felicity Richards and her young family. Ms Richards said thinking about farm safety was a chance to shift mindsets for the next generation. Picture: Supplied

“I remember riding in the tray of the ute growing up … it was a really difficult conversation for me and my husband where we said we cannot do that anymore. Kids fall off the tray of a ute and they get crushed.”

Statistics from the Safer Farms 2023 Agricultural Injury and Fatality report show 64 per cent of fatalities in 2022 were connected for farm vehicles or mobile farm machinery, with 14 per cent attributed to quad bikes, and 20 per cent to tractors.

In 2022, 55 deaths on farm, compared to 46 in 2021.

For the first six months of 2023, there were 19 deaths on farm.

In 2022, 158 injuries on farm were recorded, compared to the 128 the year prior. For the first six months of 2023, 77 on-farm injuries were recorded.

About 73 per cent of those affected were 45 years or older, with 93 per cent of fatalities male.

About 18 per cent of children injured were under 15 years of age.

Ms Richards said she viewed making choices about how to supervise children on-farm as an opportunity to change farming attitudes regarding safe practices for the betterment of the next generation.

“It’s not criticism on your ability to be a good farmer by saying you need to wear a seatbelt,” Ms Richards said.

“Wearing it doesn’t suggest you’re an incompetent quad bike rider. It’s just you only get one brain, and it’s a pretty important piece of equipment.”