The VFF Making Our Farm Safer Project Team
Megan is the Project Manager for the MOFS team, and is excited to be a part of this very important project.
Megan’s background in food security, event planning, community group and volunteer coordination, and local council engagement, means she brings a broad range of skills to this role.
Megan is enjoying helping the team to deliver meaningful and essential services and resources to the Victorian ag industry, and hopes to continue and expand the positive impact of the project into the future.
Kayla is the Communications Officer within the MOFS team. She loves using her Marketing & Comms skills to find ways to reach out and connect with varied audiences.
Kayla's diverse working background, from a social media agency to the education sector, means she has is well-equipped with experience to draw from when it comes to the world of content and social media.
Kayla is keen to expand her industry knowledge and provide insightful, and informational, content to farmers and their families.
The VFF Making Our Farms Safer project aims to deliver free farm safety tools and services that are accessible, practical and useful to all Victorian farmers to support farmer and workers’ safety, wellbeing and mental health.
Five Reasons For Risk
There are many reasons why accidents happen on farms.
Take a look at these top five reasons and identify how many of them might relate to you.
Done it all before
Time is money
Too tired to think
Lots of moving parts
Just this once
Farming Industry OHS Myths
Apart from doing as much as we can to practically improve the safety outcomes in the industry by visiting farms across Victoria – one of the key objectives of the Making Our Farms Safer project is to influence the culture of the industry.
We are confident that the vast majority of farmers honestly and sincerely believe that they do provide a safe workplace for themselves and their employees, but often when we dive deeper in to those discussions, we find that there are often legal requirement knowledge gaps and everyday hazards that farmers have simply become accustomed to working with.
We want to share and address those common statements with you, not to offend, but to welcome you to join us on our journey to keep Victorian farmers safe.
This statement is often made without direct knowledge of the laws or the updates. Victoria’s OHS Act and Regulations have only been amended on a handful of occasions and legal expectations have been remained fairly consistent since 2004.
During our farm safety consults, we provide farmers with free OHS resources, practical advice and a simple plan to follow. OHS does not need to be overly time consuming or expensive. This will save you time and money in the long term..
A clear concession that the farmer is instinctively managing safety but often without knowledge or understanding of what is legally expected and without certainty of whether there are hazards present.
Unfortunately, in the event of an accident, farmers would not be able to defend themselves on this basis. Employers are expected to know what their OHS duties are.
Whilst employees also have duties under OHS law, in the event of an accident, questions will still be asked as to whether the employer met their duties.
Some farmers gain a false sense of security that their workplace is safe on the back of a visit from an Inspector. It is not the responsibility of WorkSafe Inspectors to consult on OHS duties and many hazards are often unidentified.
Research shows that many of the fatalities that have occurred on farm were easily preventable.
There is no better time than when advice, delivered to your farm free of charge, is available. Continuously putting it off could be disastrous.
Industry Partners
Our trusted partners are committed to your safety. Check out their elite-level advice, as well as the range of useful tools on offer – all of which are designed to help keep you and your families safe on the farm