FARMERS live a ‘knife-edge existence’ with agriculture accounting for more than one in five workplace deaths, a Cheshire health and safety chief has warned.
Richard Bate, president of the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH), says this is despite agriculture employing just one per cent of the whole workforce.
Speaking at IOSH’s AGM on Tuesday, November 18, Richard called on called farm employers, rural communities, and wider businesses to do everything possible to ‘make farming a safer, and less stressful, way to make a living’.
Agriculture has prolonged poor performance on health and safety, with the worst record of any UK industry.
Having grown up in a farming community in North Wales, Richard criticised ‘an ominous acceptance’ farming will account for more workers’ deaths and serious injuries than any other industry sector.
In his inaugural presidential speech to IOSH member, he said: “Agriculture might account for only one per cent of the UK workforce, but it’s responsible for 21 per cent of all worker fatalities.
“I can’t let my IOSH presidential year be just another year in a continued knife-edge existence for agriculture workers.”
Richard has lived experience of how hard farm tragedies hit rural communities.
He recalled recent tragedies, like the harrowing case of Laura Simmons, the 22-year-old shepherd from the Cheltenham area, described by her mother as ‘lively, caring and adventurous’, who lost her life when using an overloaded quad bike which overturned.
He also remembered a 20-year-old farm worker who had his right leg crushed and his left broken with nerve and skin damage, after it became trapped in a potato harvester.
“These incidents were preventable,” he added.
“Tragically, every industry has its own everyday health and safety nightmares, which are all too dreadful, but farming has way more than its fair share.
“Things aren’t always done as safely on farms as they might be, but when it comes to safety, there can never be any excuses.
“But I know that the wider, ever-increasing pressures put on the industry, with their extra burden on farmers’ mental health, really can’t help.
“It’s not a question of judging, but it is a time now, surely, for us all to do what we can to support our farmers.
“After all, they do so much for us.”
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