Drive for safety is going to become a big cost

THE older you get, the more scared you become. That’s just a fact of life.

After 20 years working in the sector, I’ve seen and heard all the horror stories that go with farm accidents. It tends to get in on you.

In the last year or two I’ve found myself worrying more and more about the staff working on my farm.

I’m particularly vulnerable as an employer of up to 40 people, many of whom don’t speak English and have limited education.

But the biggest challenge is overcoming the cultural difference between attitudes to health and safety in a relatively rich country like Ireland and a poorer one like Romania, where most of my staff hail from.

The notion of stopping everything to go and spend €100 on a replacement PTO cover would be extravagant in Romania, where that would equal a week’s wages.

But when I think back about what was acceptable around the place here over the years, who am I to judge?

Stark-naked PTO shafts were fairly standard.

More ridiculous was my dad’s Czechoslovakian jeep that the entire locality could hear coming from a mile away.

But it was the rusted-out floor that allowed passengers to study the condition of the insides of the tyres as we motored along that is really emblazoned on my memory.

A stray stick, bar or (God forbid) limb would have had disastrous consequences.

Tractors tumbled off the edges of silage pits, spins on the top of bales down the road were a treat, and once your feet could reach the clutch you were expected to be able to drive a tractor.

The notion of having to wear safety boots on a tractor or gloves when handling oils and diesel would have been dismissed as fussiness.

That is slowly starting to change.

And not before time when you consider that farming is the most dangerous workplace.

But unfortunately it will be another nail in the coffin of small and part-time farm operations.

The reality is that making farms safer costs a lot of money.

The immediate reaction of the farm lobbyist to this will be “pay farmers more for their produce”.

While you’ll never find me objecting to somebody wanting to pay me more for my output, I can’t see that ever happening.

Farming is mainly about producing commodities, so commodity prices and trends will dictate what we get paid. Not how much safety is costing on your farm.

Buying group

Of course there are things that farmers can do to improve the safety on their farms at the lowest possible cost.

I’m lucky enough to be part of a progressive buying group that decided to actively do something about the level of safety on our farms.

Through IFA Skillnets we are able to access safety training with a 30pc discount. That, combined with the bulk purchasing power of a buying group, means that members are able to avail of one-day training courses in things like manual handling, quadbike and slurry equipment operation for as little as €45 per day.

Having participated in a few of these training sessions myself, I know much of it is common sense that will make many farmers scoff.

But as more and more farms rely on employees to get the work done, it’s the day that I’m hauled in front of the judge that I’m really thinking about.

Will you be able to say that you did all that could have