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Onerous regulations may not be the best way to reduce risk across Australia’s farms – in fact, one expert claims they can actually lead to unhelpful attitudes towards health and safety.
“The problem with regulating for safety will always be we can’t make a farmer do something they don’t want to do, and paperwork is definitely one of them,” James Chapman, a farmer who has studied agricultural safety on an international scale, told Fairfax Media.
“Many of the laws covering health and safety in various countries across the globe are to protect workers from life changing accidents which is a good thing, but what I found around the world was the fact that more legislation doesn’t make farmers any safer, in fact I would say it can have a negative effect on the attitude towards safety,” he added.
Chapman, who lost his left arm in a farming accident some years ago, also told Fairfax that risk would be significantly reduced across Australia’s farms if there was a change in attitude and culture.
“The most important, and most difficult, task is changing attitudes towards farm safety to make it a priority,” he said. “Changing the culture of the industry is the one thing that will make a difference, but it’s the hardest thing to achieve.”
The Nuffield Scholar, who farms in the English county of Warwickshire, said there are signs of positive change in the UK and suggested the swing may be a result of something rarely associated with farmers – that is, social media.
“Here in the United Kingdom we are starting to see a shift in farmers’ attitude to safety, I’m getting more and more invites to speak on the subject which five years ago would be unheard of,” he said. “The shift has come about due to some influential farmers using social media to say enough is enough.”
When asked how he thought the rise of technology would impact the level of risk within farming, Chapman said it would be interesting to find out what the future holds.
“I’m not sure if it will help or not,” he said. “Obviously the less human interaction there is then the less chance there is of getting injured, but, as we have already seen, mechanisation has meant less people on the ground meaning more lone working which results in more chance of something going wrong and less chance of surviving when it does.”
