POORLY USED or faulty vehicles and machinery are a major cause of death and injury on farms. Farmers come into contact with a host of machinery daily – combines, choppers and hay balers – which bring their own attendant dangers.

Hands, hair and clothing can be caught by unguarded PTO shafts or other unguarded moving parts such as pulleys and belts. People can be injured by front-end loaders, falling from a moving tractor or being struck by its wheels – but Ednie Farms in Peterhead has taken measures to try and reduce this.

An extensive farming enterprise consisting of livestock, arable, renewables and forestry, Ednie Farms is run by husband and wife team Peter Robertson and Dr Elaine Booth, who employ two full-time employees and others part-time as and when required.

Last year, Peter read about the safety statistics for the industry, with one in particular standing out, and decided to take action. He explained: “I was looking at the safety statistics for this industry and I was shocked to see that 37% of accidents on Scotland’s farms were caused by people being hurt by vehicles or machinery. I know in this area of at least two incidents recently where family members have been seriously injured by vehicles.

"I decided that to reduce the risk of that happening on our farms we needed to take action, and we put in place a hi-vis policy, where anyone, no matter their age or purpose, who comes onto the farm must wear a hi-vis jacket or hi-vis boiler suit," he explained.

“We’ve invested in those for our employees and family, and when we have schoolchildren on the farm we ensure every single one of them wears one. This policy is widespread in nearly every other manual labour industry, such as the buildings and construction sector, so why should agriculture be any different?

“We often work in challenging conditions – late into the night, in dark sheds, or at a pace to try and get jobs finished, and any small measures our industry can take to make their farms and crofts safer, is a huge step to reducing the accident and death toll that our industry has such a bad record of," he insisted.

Elaine added: “We spoke with our employees and family at the time and talked through the reasons for implementing this policy, and they were fully supportive. And it has proved effective. When I went to one of our forestry sites recently, the contractor admitted that he had seen me far in the distance because I was wearing hi-vis, and not just when I was up closer to the machinery. He was aware I was nearby and was able to easily keep an eye on where I was as he worked and stop as he saw me approaching.”

The Ednie team agree that it has made workers across the whole business much more aware of those working around them, making the farm a safer place to live and work.

“You can get hi-vis for so little these days” noted Peter. “It really is a very simple, cost effective, but yet highly useful way of making our farms and working environment safer and I certainly think others should be considering implementing this policy on their farms.”

Peter agreed that farm safety is a lifestyle and not just a slogan, and freely admitted that safety was now so much more a part of their lives and that they should have been far more conscious of it years ago.

According to Martin Malone from Farm Safety Partnership Scotland: “Machinery and transport continue to be the main causes of life changing and life ending injuries on farms. In fact 40% of all farm workers who have lost their lives in agriculture over the past decade were workplace machinery-transport related.

"Whilst this year we have seen an improvement in the numbers of farmers losing their lives as a result of machinery and transport, the fact is that one death is one too many. Everybody in farming knows somebody who has been injured or killed in an accident. The team at Ednie Farms are absolutely right – reminding farmers that farm safety is a lifestyle, not a slogan seems like the right thing to do, given the culture of risk taking in the industry. One day your luck could run out," warned Mr Malone.

“Agricultural machinery may be advancing with safety features but it is still dangerous so please take a minute to use the SAFE STOP approach – ensure tractors, telehandlers and associated equipment is switched off when doing routine tasks or making routine checks and maintenance and take your time to think about what you are doing and what might go wrong as making a few simple checks could actually save a life – maybe your own!”