- February 5, 2024
The Making Our Farms Safer team, and the Victorian Farmers Federation, are excited to announce the launch of our new farm safety handbook ‘Stay Farming Longer and Safer: a practical guide for older farmers and their families’.
Older workers in the 60+ age group, made up 41.8% of the fatalities in the Victorian agriculture sector in 2022.
“It’s so important that we disrupt the ‘it’ll be right’ mentality when it comes to farm safety. We know complacency kills, and it’s through resources such as this handbook that we shift the dial” says VFF vice president and Chair of the Making our Farmers Safer Committee, Danyel Cucinotta.
If you would like to read the VFF media release, please click the button below.
If you would like to download the handbook, please visit our campaign page.
- August 4, 2023
The 2023 Safer Farms report reveals great insights into the agriculture industry, the work that has been done and the work that is yet to be done to work towards safer farms for everyone.
The number of injuries and fatalities is still a concerning figure. We encourage farmers and those in the agriculture industry to continue to implement safer practices and procedures to create safer farm environments for farmers, farm families, children and employees.
- July 17, 2023
The Victorian Government has announced more funding for the MOFS project, to continue delivery of our excellent Farm Safety Services, and so we can focus on the very important issue with a new resource.
Older farmers in the 60+ age group, made up 41.8% of the fatalities of Victorian farmers in 2022.
We will develop a new guidebook that will fit into our Making our Farm Families Safer campaign, that addresses the most pressing issues for our older farmers.
If you would like to express an interest in being part of the committee that will be supporting the development of the guidebook, please contact us at mofs@vff.org.au.
If you would like to read the VFF media release, please click the button below.
If you would like to read the Victorian Government’s media release, please go here.
- July 11, 2023
The first stage of funding for the VFF MOFS project finished up on 30th June 2023. As part of the review of the project, we engaged Quantum Market Research to perform an independent evaluation report of the whole project.
Summary of impact and future potential (as of May 2023):
- 69% of farmers who had booked a farm safety visit, had implemented or improved one or more safety practices on their farm as a result
- 84% of farmers surveyed said initiatives like MOFS are crucial for keeping Victorian farmers safe
- 80% of farmers surveyed said they would prefer in-person services, such as the farm safety visits of the MOFS project, to online services
This summary highlights what the MOFS team has done to date, and gives us insights for the successful rollout of our future projects.
- May 30, 2023
Agrifutures Australia recently released its annual report on farming incidents that occurred nationally from 1 January to 31 December 2022.
During this period, a total of 55 on-farm deaths were reported. Sadly this is an increase from the year prior where 46 deaths occurred. In 2022, tractors (11 incidents) and quadbikes (8 incidents) were reported most frequently in on-farm incidents. There were also an additional 158 non-fatal on-farm injury reports in the Australian media, where 28 (18%) incidents involved children aged under 15 years, with a number involving quadbikes.
To read the report click this external link
- February 19, 2023
National OHS statistics report released
Safe Work Australia recently released the key workplace statistics report for 2022.
The report provides an overview of national data on work-related fatalities and workers’ compensation claims from all Australian jurisdictions between 2003 and 2021. This includes trends, gender and age comparisons, and industry and occupation breakdowns.
In 2021 the agricultural sector accounted for nearly a third of the workplace fatalities in Australia, second only to the transport industry.
The more concerning figure is the rate of fatalities per 100,000 workers which reflects that workers are farms more likely to be seriously injured or killed at work than in any other industry sector, including industries that are commonly referred to as high risk, including construction and mining.