Farm safety: Children are key to changing family attitudes

WorkSafe data shows 61 farmers have lost their lives and there have been more than 45,000 injuries over the last five years while working on the farm. Photo / RNZ, Nate McKinnon

By Charlotte Mulder of RNZ

Former dairy farmer Mandi McLeod has experienced three life-threatening farm-related injuries in her life.

Her most serious accident was in her early 20s during university studies.

“It was just a moment of inattention where I put the quad bike up a rut and it flipped over, landing upside down on top of me,” McLeod said.

“That resulted in a concussion and a broken collarbone.”

Shortly after that, McLeod experienced another two concussions and a rib injury while riding horses on the farm.

Growing up, rural safety was not something that was discussed at home.

She said her accidents were not taken seriously at the time and her symptoms got progressively worse.

“When you can’t get the stuff that’s in your head out, it just feels like a combination of marshmallow and spaghetti,” she said.

And it has taken a toll on her mental health.

“It was probably a good 12 months before I actually laughed.

“I remember that vividly.

“My dad was in tears because he said ‘I’ve actually not heard you laugh for 12 months’.”

Now she suffers ongoing effects from brain trauma.

“It’s had a significant impact on my life. I could never farm fulltime after my accident,” she said.

“I’m not allowed to have another head injury. So I’m not allowed to ride a bike, snow-ski, any of those things where I might potentially have an accident.”

She said all her accidents were preventable.

And McLeod was not the only New Zealander.

According to WorkSafe data, 61 farmers have lost their lives and there have been more than 45,000 injuries over the last five years while working on the farm.

And the stats were not going down.

To help combat these fatalities, Safer Farms was created to educate the agricultural sector to make farms safer places to work and reduce fatalities.

Chairwoman Lindy Nelson said they had a strategy called “Farm Without Harm” to help prevent physical and mental harm to the farming community.

“This involves looking at the four key harm areas that are causing serious injury.

“So that is what we call psychosocial harm, vehicle harm, our poisoning, and harm that happens being around animals.”

Nelson said it has made a huge difference for the community, but more needed to be done.

“I think children can be hugely influential in social change.”

Author and farmer Harriet Bremner.

In fact, farmer, author and advocate for farm safety Harriet Bremner is one step ahead.

Drawing on her own personal experience of loss, Bremner has written two children’s books featuring farm safety, along with leading the “think brain safe” campaign.

This involved visiting rural schools where local farmers, police and agents teach safety modules to children.

Examples include learning weight distribution on trailers, knowing the difference between farm chemicals, how to handle livestock and basic first aid training.

“I had an adult come up to me and he said his child came home and approached him about wearing his helmet from a different angle,” Bremner said.

“He was like ‘Dad, you know, even if you’re just doing a small job that some people usually have, often have these accidents and if you fall off the motorbike and hit your head, you might die and we won’t have a dad anymore’.”

Bremner believed introducing change through tamariki (children) was key.

“If you think back to the McDonald’s ‘Make It Click’ campaign 30 years ago, not everyone wore their seatbelt on the road and now they do,” she said.

“So it was a real generational change in behaviour and it’s a pretty similar thing that I’m trying to do with the safety campaign.

“The kids are amazing at bringing up these quite, sometimes brutal conversations with their parents, which is what we’re hoping to get out of the days as well.”

The only downfall was the constant need for sponsorship from local businesses, which Bremner said could be challenging.

This was where the idea of introducing farm safety into the school curriculum was welcomed.

In a written statement, the Ministry of Education said: “Schools design learning programmes for health and physical education (HPE) that meet the needs of their students and the context of where they live, work or experience recreation.”

But for now, nothing was compulsory.

And it remained clear that something in New Zealand’s farming attitude needed to change.

McLeod said if safety gear was normalised in schools, things would have turned out differently.

“I wouldn’t have had the start of multiple concussion syndrome if I was wearing a helmet.”

She, along with many others, believed the way to normalise farm safety was to start educating up the family tree rather than down.

– RNZ