Safety matters for you, your family and your workers – and your livestock, crops and property.

In the lead up to National Agriculture Day on November 20 this year, and considering the theme Our Farmers, Our Future, it is a good time to pause for a moment to reflect on why the implementation of good on property safety practices is so important: all day, every day.

Research over many years has shown that food production and farming is one of the most physically demanding and potentially dangerous industries to work in.

Farms are busy workplaces where people use heavy machinery, operate vehicles, handle livestock, work with chemicals and perform tasks in often extreme weather conditions.

Whether you are a farm or property owner, full-time worker, contractor, seasonal employee, visitor, or family member helping out, everyone has a responsibility to work safely and look after themselves and others.

Accidents on farms can cause serious injuries or death and tractors, quad bikes, motorbikes, harvesters and other farm machinery can be dangerous if they are not operated correctly and machinery rollovers, entanglement in moving parts and vehicle accidents are significant risks.

Cattle, horses, sheep and other livestock can behave unpredictably, particularly when frightened, injured or under stress. Workers can be kicked, crushed or trampled if they do not handle animals carefully.

Rural, regional and remote cattle stations, properties and farms also present environmental hazards with extreme heat, bushfires, storms, floods and long periods of drought making farm work challenging both physically and mentally.

Long working hours, isolation, financial pressures and unpredictable conditions can affect a person’s wellbeing and concentration. Tired or stressed workers are more likely to make mistakes, which can lead to accidents.

Chemical safety is another major consideration as farm workers often handle pesticides, herbicides, fuels, fertilisers and veterinary medicines.

Ultimately, on farm safety is everyone’s responsibility and following procedures, maintaining equipment, reporting hazards and looking out for fellow workers help create a safer working environment and in the case of remote and sole workers where emergency assistance may take time to arrive having a management plan and a management solution that you can rely on is critical.

By making safety a priority, all day and every day, farm workers can protect their physical and mental health, support their families, improve productivity and help ensure that Australian farms remain safe and sustainable places to work.

Australian agtech company AirAgri believes that every person deserves to go home safely at the end of the day.

This simple objective is what is driving its latest approach of farm safety integration of the familiar WhatsApp platform with its established safety and compliance platform, with the potential to extend access through emerging satellite-to-mobile services.

AirAgri’s new interface solution will support farmers, employees, contractors and visitors to complete property check-ins, report hazards and incidents, and record and support existing biosecurity management and communications processes through a familiar WhatsApp platform.

AirAgri sees WhatsApp as an additional access channel for everyday safety, biosecurity and compliance activities, while its dedicated Bush Beacon and lone-worker monitoring technologies continue to provide critical protection for people working alone, including situations where an individual may be unable to initiate a request for assistance.

Information submitted through the channel is incorporated into AirAgri’s existing platform, providing property operators with a central record for follow-up, compliance and trace-back without requiring each field user to download and learn another dedicated farm application.

AirAgri founder James Diamond believes that agricultural technology has delivered substantial advances, but adoption is still being held back by the practical realities of remote work.

James and Paul Diamond, AirAgri

AirAgri was developed by James and his brother Paul Diamond on their family’s Mansfield cattle and sheep property and over the past seven years, the company has expanded from digital property mapping and farm records into lone-worker monitoring, visitor and vehicle management, contractor induction, incident and hazard reporting, biosecurity, training and compliance.

Its technology is designed for businesses across beef cattle grazing, feedlot, dairy, sheep, broadacre cropping, horticulture and other agricultural sectors including agri-tourism, and has increasing application across the rural, regional and remote resource, energy and data centre sectors.

In 2024, AirAgri received the 2023 WorkSafe Award for Commitment to Workplace Health and Safety on a Farm.

James knows from experience that technology can be both a burden if used in isolation and but also a breakthrough solution if used collaboratively.

He believes that for much of the digital-ag era, technology companies have asked the farm to adapt to the software and that can mean another account, another licence, another password and another application that must be installed, updated and understood by every employee, contractor or visitor.

Simplicity is what changes adoption, and for the first time a worker with a compatible phone may be able to complete a familiar safety or biosecurity process beyond the terrestrial network, without carrying another piece of communications hardware.

James understands farmers questioning of whether each new generation of digital technology was genuinely better than the notebook traditionally carried in a shirt pocket, and that if a new system takes longer, creates more work or becomes unavailable as soon as you leave mobile coverage, then it is reasonable for a farmer to question its value.

AirAgri solutions are designed to retain the simplicity of that notebook while using technology to ensure that information is available to the people who need it, when they need it.

James and the team at AirAgri are driven by the knowledge that technology alone does not create a safer workplace or a more biosecure farm, but participation does. Biosecurity and safety are shared responsibilities, so if we can remove the friction and make the right action the easiest action, more people can do the right thing at the right time.

“For seven years, AirAgri has been focused on one mission: bringing farmers and rural workers home safely every day.

We’ve learnt that technology alone doesn’t make a workplace safer. It needs to be accessible, practical and used consistently by the people working on the ground.

By bringing everyday safety and biosecurity processes into familiar communication channels like WhatsApp, we can remove barriers to participation while connecting that information to AirAgri’s broader safety and compliance platform.

Importantly, this complements our dedicated lone-worker monitoring technology, which provides another layer of protection when someone is working remotely or may be unable to call for help.

Our goal isn’t to give farmers another app. It’s to make safety simpler, more connected and more effective, regardless of the size or complexity of their operation.

If we can make safety participation effortless and reduce the barriers, protect people when they cannot protect themselves and turn everyday activity into actionable intelligence then we are doing our bit to ensure that all our farmers can have a safer future.”

AirAgri has commenced engagement with agricultural enterprises, government agencies, industry bodies, insurers and research organisations about expanding its model across Australian agriculture.

For more information go to www.airagri.com.au