The Q&A on the RABDF stand was part of Farm Safety Week and followed the publication of new figures showing 29 on-farm fatalities in 2015/6.
“People are suffering the same accidents they did ten years ago,” said Dr Andrew Turner of the HSE.
“Lessons are not being learned and a particular concern is the proportion of older people involved.
“I’ve been in the HSE for 20 years and when I joined construction had the worst record. Over time that’s fallen by 50%. If you want a living in construction, at some point you’ll be a sub-contractor on a site, perhaps run by a multinational, and there will be a strict regime in place.
“It took 20 years for the hard hat to become a badge of honour. A narrow escape in farming is still seen as part of the industry and that’s a culture we need to change.”
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Brian Rees of Farm Safety Partnership Wales said: “Our industry has a lot of lone working. Your phone is the first item of your first aid kit. Always have it on your body – not in the cab. I’m looking for the day when every mobile phone in the country can get a decent signal.”
Ed Ford, NFYFC vice chairman, said: “What everyone has forgotten about is the old two-way radio.
“As soon as mobile phones came in we chucked them all away, but because you can’t get signal everywhere, we’ve just spent £3,000 bringing them back. Even if you just get out of the cab for a pee, you check in. You wouldn’t do that if you had to dial the number.”
He added: “You can’t go onto a construction site without a certificate. I’m not saying we need to implement that on-farm 100%, but halfway would improve things. And little things like hi-vis jackets – they could reduce crush accidents overnight. It’s so obvious but there’s a stigma and we need to get past that. No offence to the older generation, but some of the attitudes have been passed down.”
Norfolk farmer Tim Papworth suffered a fall from a ladder while changing a lightbulb in a potato store which left him in a drug-induced coma for five weeks.
“It can happen so easily,” he said. “I didn’t want to put an employee up a ladder and I could’ve done it differently; we’ve got a tele and a cage.
“The effect on the family business was huge, it put pressure on them work-wise, but even more so on my poor wife, who had to drive to the hospital every morning to see me in a vegetative state.”
Richard Percy, NFU Mutual chairman, earlier put the cost of accidents in 2015 at £127m from 3,400 accident claims. He added the figures “pale into insignificance compared to the social impact”.