Game Changers: Stephanie Berkeley, the farm safety campaigner
Stephanie Berkeley © Richard Stanton Farm safety campaigner Stephanie Berkeley is one of our Game Changer Award nominees.
Stephanie has dedicated the past decade to reducing workplace fatalities and accidents in agriculture.
As manager of the Farm Safety Foundation – also known as the Yellow Wellies charity – she strives to improve attitudes and behaviours to risk-taking and poor mental health among farmers under 40 years old.
See also: How to manage less common farm health and safety risks
What is a Game Changer?
This unique category – created to mark the 20th anniversary of the Farmers Weekly Awards – recognises individuals who have driven innovation that has had a positive impact on food and farming in the past 20 years.
Nominees might be professionals, academics, scientists, researchers, environmentalists, or anyone else making significant contributions to the agricultural industry.
To find out more go to Game Changers on our Awards website.
At a glance: Stephanie Berkeley
- Strives to make farming a safer place to live and work
- Safety training for 25,000 young people in agriculture
- Works with individuals and organisations across UK
- Mental health among farmers no longer taboo subject
The foundation was established by rural insurer NFU Mutual as an independent charity in 2014. For the first three years, Stephanie was its “only Yellow Wellie” turning her vision into reality.
Today, she leads a team of four she “couldn’t be without”.
“I didn’t want it to be fluffy and passive – I wanted it to be positive and to achieve something,” says Stephanie, who drew on eight years working for an educational charity in her native Northern Ireland before Yellow Wellies.
Young people
“I wanted us to be interactive, to get young people involved – to listen to them and deliver messages the way they want to receive them – rather than telling them they must do this and can’t do that and not being heard.”
Just 1% of Great Britain’s working population are employed in agriculture – but the industry accounts for 16% of all workplace deaths. In total, 21 farmworkers and six members of the public lost their lives last year.
It’s an abysmal safety record which has proved stubbornly challenging to improve.
But Yellow Wellies has scored some notable successes, especially among the next generation of farmers.
Stephanie’s team organises the annual Farm Safety Week (22-26 July 2024) and the Mind Your Head mental health campaign.
Over the past 10 years, more than 25,000 young farmers have received farm safety training.
No longer taboo
Once a taboo subject on many farms, safety today is taken more seriously – and talked about more. So too is mental health.
And it’s not just about fatalities – it’s about reducing the 23,000 or so farm accidents that happen every year too.
Some people might say there’s been no real change in the numbers, acknowledges Stephanie.
But a closer look at the statistics shows that isn’t quite true – and the campaign is punching above its weight.
During 2014, when Yellow Wellies started, 31 farmers were killed on farms.
Nine of them were under 44. Last year, 27 farmers lost their lives – but only two of them were in the charity’s target age range.
A word from our sponsor 
Lightsource bp is an international solar business.
Our long-running relationship with farmers and the UK farming industry, and our commitment to bolstering the rural economy is why Game Changers is such a good fit for our business – we’re proud to be sponsoring an award celebrating the pioneers of the sector.