Farm Safety Week 2023: Farm fatalities worryingly high
© Tim Scrivener Today marks the start of Farm Safety Week, an annual campaign to inspire safe practice and reduce fatalities on farms across the UK and Ireland.
Organised by the Farm Safety Foundation, this year’s event will run from the 17- 21 July.
It comes in the wake of the latest workplace fatalities report, which flagged agriculture as statistically the most dangerous industry in the country.
See also: Top farming safety tips from Farmers Weekly readers
The report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) shows that in the last year alone, there have been 21 recorded farmworker deaths in the UK.
A further six members of the public, including one child, were also fatally injured on farms, bringing the total to 27.
In Northern Ireland, farming accounted for three of the eight (38%) reported workplace fatalities in 2022/23, according to the HSE for Northern Ireland.
While other industries have seen a reduction in worker death rates, agriculture remains stubbornly high.
Due to higher-than-average retirement ages, the sector is also seeing a worrying trend in incidents among the over-65s.
Farm Safety Foundation/Yellow Wellies manager Stephanie Berkeley said: “While we are seeing an encouraging improvement in the attitudes and behaviours in the next generation of farmers, we are also seeing a disproportionately higher number of older farmers losing their lives in farm incidents – 33% of fatal injuries were in people over the age of 65.
“The fact is, every single one of us living and working in the industry needs to step up and take responsibility, and challenge and change their attitudes so we can make our farms safer places to work and to live.”
NFU ‘Take 5 to Stay Alive’
The NFU has called for the agricultural industry to change its attitude towards farm safety by launching its “Take 5 to Stay Alive” campaign.
The campaign urges farmers to take a five-minute break to think about the task they are about to undertake, and to ask whether there are any safety precautions that they could take before starting out.
This could be something as simple as remembering to put a seatbelt on, wearing a hi-vis jacket or helmet, or staying vigilant while working with livestock.
NFU vice-president David Exwood said: “People are our most valuable assets and we should all be thinking about our safety on farm 365 days a year.
“But Farm Safety Week is an excellent way for us to come together, raise awareness, and share practical advice about how to look after ourselves and each other out in the field. We all have to talk more about safety.”