The Agricultural Leaders’ Health and Safety Action Group includes co-operative processers and retailers, farming companies and producer groups.
The group’s steering committee chairman Steven Carden said everyone wanted better health and safety and the idea was to learn from members’ experiences to make businesses healthier and safer and to provide tools and support for the wider industry.
“A few of us got together and realised that rather than all individually grappling with the same problems there would be real benefits in working together and sharing the solutions.
“If there are some simple, practical things that can make farming safer and healthier then everyone is going to be better off.”
Carden said the intention was to open membership to individual farmers and businesses and to use existing farming networks to achieve the goal of not just making farming safer but to sell NZ as the safest producer of food in the world.
The plan was to use regional networks to involve farmers in improving health and safety, starting with regional workshops in the first quarter of 2017.
From those workshops the goal was to agree to some objectives then try to better understand the sectors’ problems and what actions were required.
Carden, who is also Landcorp chief executive, said the farming company found eight risks accounted for nearly 80% of incidents.
The biggest risks were being struck by a cow in milking sheds, losing control or coming off two-wheeled motorcycles, being struck by cattle, sheep or deer and losing control of a tractor, quad bike or side by side.
Another objective was to work with contractors and determine how to keep them and farmers safe.
Federated Farmers health and safety spokeswoman Katie Milne said farmers wanted more information on the causes of accidents and to have practical tools to make their farms safer.
The initial members of the group were FMG, Landcorp, Ballance Agri-Nutrients, Fonterra, Ravensdown, Business Leaders’ Safety Forum, Farmlands Co-op, Ob Group, OnSide, Hopkins Farming, Dairy Holdings, Lone Star Farms, WorkSafe, DairyNZ, Milk NZ, Beef + Lamb NZ, LIC, Craigmore, AsureQuality, Silver Fern Farms, ACC, Farm Right, Ngai Tahu Farming and PKW Farms.
