Safety matters, especially on the farm

By Tracey Arts, Director, Ontario Federation of Agriculture

With the weather warming up, farmers start to become eager to hit the fields and get spring planting underway. That’s still a few weeks away, though, so now is a great time to give some thought to staying safe and healthy as we go about our daily jobs and lives on the farm. After all, for us the farm isn’t just a workplace, it’s also where we live and raise our families.

It’s particularly relevant right now because March 10 to 16 is Canadian Agricultural Safety Week, an annual event that focuses on increasing awareness of farm safety, sharing resources and promoting the importance of developing best practices and farm safety plans.

My husband and I are dairy farmers in Oxford County. A farm can be a hazardous workplace so it’s important to know where the dangers are. For us that means not just being careful ourselves, but also making sure our employees have the training they need, whether it’s safely disposing of needles in a sharps container, or knowing where the blind spots are when driving a tractor or a skid steer.

We also have two young boys, so we’ve taken great care to teach them about safety as they grow but in a way that lets them be involved in the activities on the farm and doesn’t stifle their natural curiosity about our animals and equipment. The older they get, the more they want to help so it is critical for us to teach them how to do things properly and safely – and to ensure they have respect for the hazards that livestock, tools and machines can represent.

At a high level, farm safety is about knowing what to on the farm to avoid accidents and injuries – and not just during busy times like planting or harvest but anytime you’re working with equipment or livestock.