Growing pressure’s putting lives at risk

IN any working environment where there is a combination of powerful machinery and animals accidents are bound to occur, all too often with fatal results.

And even though statistics have demonstrated for years that farming is a high-risk occupation it is still a sobering moment every time we are reminded yet again that farming’s fatality rate is the highest of any UK industry.

That grim statistic has been underlined this month by the death of four people in farm-related accidents in the space of just three weeks: an appalling start to the next 12-month compilation of figures.

But to the records of deaths caused by machinery, falling from roofs or aggressive livestock we must add the instances of farmer suicides to gain a true perspective of the problem.

Because I am convinced that both suicides and most accidents can be traced back to a common cause: the appalling pressure that farmers now find themselves under. Farmers are used to dealing with a certain amount of pressure. But pressure from the weather and from adverse market movements are hardly new factors in their existence.

What is new is the pressure from the top of the food chain to deliver quality, on time and at a price – and in all too many cases a totally inadequate one.

As this kind of pressure has increased so have farm accidents – and suicides. Farmers who are distracted by pressure become careless or cut dangerous corners. Others facing what appear to them to be intolerable amounts of pressure for weeks, months and years ahead tragically take the view that they can’t cope any longer.

Yet never is this spelled out. Farm welfare organisations – and I am not belittling their activities – wring their hands over the situation. Other agencies mount safety campaigns to highlight the inherent risks in farming to people who are already well aware of them. But no one is prepared to stand up and speak the obvious truth: that the way most of the food chain now works in this country amounts to a regime of fear.

Fear of being penalised for late deliveries. Fear of having consignments rejected because of ‘quality issues’. Fear of de-listing and having contracts rescinded.

The effects are felt right the way down through the industry. Take the case of the contractor I was talking to recently and who looked – as I remarked – none too well. Neither would I be, he said, if I had to work under the kind of pressure he was experiencing, citing the case of the farmer who had just warned him that he expected him to produce the finest quality silage because if it was anything less that would affect the quality of the milk and he (the farmer) would then be penalised.

Ultimately this pressure is being applied from the top by a powerful but relatively small cohort of people with limited knowledge as to the practicalities – and the physical limitations – of farming. They therefore present a much smaller and therefore easier target to go after than the entire farming community but go for them the farming organisations – and the Government – must.

It has to be spelled out to them: their way of doing business is leaving far too many farmers injured or dead.

But who is going to have the courage to stand up and tell them?

Farmers who are distracted by pressure become careless or cut dangerous corners