New Zealand agriculture is costing ACC $120 million a year in workplace injury claims, and a Safer Farms white paper released at Fieldays argues technology can cut that figure by removing risk from the system before it arises.

“The onus is on the individual to always use great judgement, read the situation carefully, do better, try harder, use common sense,” says Lindy Nelson, Farm Without Harm Ambassador for Safer Farms.

“The idea of technology is to move away from always having to do the right thing; so behaviour-led to system-led.”

The paper, Safer By Design: The Role of Technology in Farm Safety, surveys technologies already in use on farm, from virtual fencing to autonomous yards, and identifies areas where further investment is needed.

“It’s just the ability to fail safely.

“How do we put technology, basically in the way, so we’re designing risk out before risk occurs?”

Nelson says farmers will not invest in safety technology on safety grounds alone, and the paper accounts for that reality. She says a visit to her future son-in-law’s fully automated Te Pari yards brought that principle into focus.

“What he could do with one person in 30 minutes was taking four people in four hours previously,” she says.

“Technology gives us some safety gains, but it also needs to be part of the system so that we get gains across the whole thing.”

The paper says 13,000 livestock-related injuries occur annually in New Zealand, and negative social media commentary after a recent farm rollover illustrated the behaviour-led mindset the paper sets out to move past.

“‘Oh, idiot, shouldn’t have done that, you should’ve used common sense. Oh, natural selection.’ This is always relying on the individual to do the right thing, to see the situation really clearly in the moment,” she says.

“Technologies step in for that so that we don’t rely on our own judgement, which sometimes is flawed.”

The white paper is a starting point, Nelson says, with the Farm Without Harm strategy drawing together farmers, processors and truck drivers to address serious injuries and fatalities across the sector.

Safer Farms is also building a network of farmer ambassadors to carry the message peer-to-peer.

“We’ve got eight more farmers waiting in the wings for us to onboard, so don’t tell me people aren’t interested in standing up for protecting one another,” she says.

“That’s the vision coming to life – everyday farming people protect one another from preventable harm.”

The link to the full paper can be found here.

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