National Farm Safety Week allowed farmers and their family to engage in meaningful conversations in accordance with the #PlantASeedForSafety message.
From Sunday, July 20 to Saturday, July 26 National Farm Safety Week highlighted the need to focus on rural health and safety, wellbeing, normalise mistakes and have honest talks about on-farm safety mishaps.
#PlantASeedForSafety founder and chief planter of seeds Alex Thomas said the team partnered with Syngenta Australia a couple of years ago and put together a YouTube clip called ‘People make mistakes’.
“It’s in line with the National Farm Safety Week theme of ‘second chances: who knows how many you’ll get?’,” she said.
“It’s aimed at really getting into people’s ears and minds and make them think about how they might react when something goes wrong and how to make the most out of the opportunity to learn from it, in a way that’s engaging and fun.”
In 2012 Ms Thomas moved to Port Lincoln for a couple of years, in which time she did some work with oyster producers, prawn fishers and farmers.
“That was really the catalyst for the journey I’m on now,” she said.
“While I was over there I worked out this institutionalised way of safety that is centred around systems and processes that just doesn’t work in small family businesses.
“It was a really fantastic and interesting learning experience over there.”
Ms Thomas’ passion for trying to inspire safer and healthier outcomes stemmed from wanting to help people like her dad, Chris Thomas, a retired farmer who has battled livestock-borne virus Q-fever, Ross River virus, diabetes, heart and respiratory failure and multiple amputations.
“Watching Dad deteriorate particularly over the past 10 to 15 years has just strengthened my resolve to do whatever it can to try and prevent something like that happening to another family,” Ms Thomas said.
While there has been an increased level of engagement in regards to farm safety, Ms Thomas said there was still a long way to go to get the conversations to be meaningful for farmers of different generations.
“I think the conversation has traditionally been very focused on the bureaucratic paperwork side of safety, which doesn’t render better outcomes for people,” she said.
“I think that’s one of the biggest barriers of getting people involved, because no farmer will ever argue about the risks of kids on farms or augers.
“As soon as you start talking about paperwork, their eyes will understandably glaze over and the topic becomes almost irrelevant, so I think we should talk about safety and what it means in a practical sense which is engaging and fun.”
If farmers are exhausted, overwhelmed or under extraordinary pressure their ability to make decisions and be aware of what is around them was impaired, Ms Thomas said.
“I think we’ve got to be compassionate and kind to ourselves and we’re not always gonna get it right,” she said.
“We do have to make a deliberate effort to carve the time out and have a think about something that we’re doing, particularly when we’re under pressure.
“We don’t necessarily have the support around us to make life easier or safer.”
For more information on #PlantASeedForSafety people can visit plantaseedforsafety.com.au
