Above: A still from the Farm Safety Foundation's new film: Out of the mouth of babes
For those of us who have been following every possible safety measure to avoid the invisible danger of Covid-19, the thought of someone seeing a danger and doing nothing to avoid it is hard to fathom.
But this is exactly what farmers and farm workers have been doing for years and this is why, despite improvements in the industry reported in this year’s HSE Fatal Injuries in Agriculture Forestry and Fishing in GB figures, agriculture continues to have the poorest safety record of any occupation in the UK.
“So why do we need Farm Safety Week – what’s the point?” As the charity that manages and funds Farm Safety Week, we have heard these comments many times.
We also get challenged: “Shouldn’t every week be Farm Safety Week?” The short answer is ‘Yes it should’ but the fact remains that it isn’t.
The Farm Safety Foundation, or Yellow Wellies as some of you know us, is a small independent charity working all year round to educate and engage the next generation of farmers so they can appreciate the importance of looking after their physical and mental wellbeing.
There are no borders when it comes to safety. Like our other campaign ‘Mind Your Head’, Farm Safety Week is one week in the year when we bring together over 200 partners in five countries for five days to show a united front in calling for the industry to take safety seriously each and every day, not just during Farm Safety Week.
While it is encouraging that the latest HSE figures report a 37.5% decrease in the number of deaths on GB farms, this is no time to be complacent. In a year that has been anything but normal, we decided to take a brand new approach this year.
The farm safety partnerships are doing a great job sharing messages around the ‘big four’ causes of incidents so we decided to look at other areas that can present a danger to those living and working in agriculture today.
Throughout the week, we showed how Covid-19 has impacted the industry and, with the tragic news that three children lost their lives in just two months on UK farms, we wanted to stress that it has never been more important to keep children safe on-farm.
Also, following reports of farmers texting and ‘TikToking’ while behind the wheel, we focused on distracted driving and rural road safety.
That said, with the encouraging figures in this year’s HSE annual report, we also took a look at some of the exciting technology that is helping us all to farm more safely.
We used press and broadcast, social media and a powerful new hero film ‘Out of the mouths of babes’ to deliver this year’s messages. We achieved prime-time television and radio coverage nationwide, were trending on Twitter on day one of FSW and our video has had over three quarters of a million views on social media!
This is all very impressive but none of it actually matters unless farmers start to change their risk-taking behaviours, start to improve their attitudes and start taking safety seriously.