SUPPORT FARM SAFETY WEEK!

This week, 22-26 July, marks the 12^th Farm Safety Week – an annual campaign led and funded by the Farm Safety Foundation (Yellow Wellies). Here Stephanie Berkeley, Manager of the Farm Safety Foundation outlines what the campaign is all about, how farmers can get involved as well as access more information about keeping safe on farm.

This year’s campaign aims to raise awareness of the many dangers of working in farming – an industry that consumers rely on three times a day but one that has the poorest safety record of any occupation in the UK and Ireland.

According to the HSE, last year 23 farm workers lost their lives due to accidents in the workplace – 17% of the total number of workplace deaths in GB. In fact, the worker fatal injury rate (the number of people killed for every 100,000 in a particular industry) in farming is 21-times higher than the rate across all-industries but why is this?

The fact is that there are more risks associated with farming than any other industry. You can never make a farm 100% safe … but can’t we at least try?

Farm Safety Week brings together over 400 organisations in five countries to help encourage a change in the attitudes and behaviours around working safely.  Our focus is on supporting those currently working in the industry and those making their journey into it to be responsible, confident and safe. Our ambition is clear – to find a way to stop farmers, farm workers and their families having life-changing accidents and dying in the workplace.

Farm Safety Week may be one week in the year for many but we do this every day. As a small charity, we’re delivering training at colleges and universities throughout the UK. We are also researching the attitudes and behaviours to risk-taking and poor mental health and whether they are linked and we’re creating free practical solutions and resources to make our farms safer places to live and to work. One of these resources is the “Little Book of Farm Safety” a brand new pocket-sized guide offering advice and tips on the many hazards facing a working farmer.  To download a copy of the booklet, simply click here.

The Yellow Wellies website also provides a host of information to farmers on a range of topics including; mental wellbeing, working at height, working with livestock and machinery as well as other potentially hazardous activities including working with slurry, with all-terrain vehicles as well as near to powerlines.  There is also a section that looks offers advice on child safety on farms.

This is your industry, so we are encouraging farmers from across the country to get involved and support the campaign through their social media and by raising awareness within their communities. By clicking here you can access our social media cards to share and show that you are supporting the campaign.

Please remember to tag us @yellowwelliesUK – and use the hashtag #FarmSafetyWeek for posts, tweets and retweets.

This year’s Farm Safety Week offers an opportunity to rethink the way we all approach farm safety and risk-taking. Farmers are rightly proud of a reputation of being able to fix anything on the farm; machinery, fencing, equipment… anything.

The challenge now is whether farmers can fix the industry’s broken health and safety record!

THANK YOU for your support.