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Farm deaths and injuries continue to take heavy toll

Beef Central, 14/09/2020

(Photo: WorkSafeBC)

ON-FARM deaths have remained steady at 33 for the six months to June 30 – a similar number to the 34 recorded for the same period last year, according to AgriFutures Australia’s ‘Non-intentional Farm Related Incidents in Australia 2020 mid-year report’.

On a state-by-state basis, Victoria recorded the highest number of fatalities at 11 for the first six months of this year, followed closely by Queensland with 9 and New South Wales with 7.

Since 2001, 1523 people have lost their lives on a farm due to non-intentional injury in Australia.

For the 2020 period, the main cause of on-farm fatalities was quad bikes (9), followed by tractors (4) and utes (4).

Males were involved in 27 total cases (81.8pc), with data for age showing the most fatalities (11) occurred in the 60-74 years bracket.

An additional 71 non-fatal on-farm injury events were reported in the Australian media for the current reporting period.

Twelve (17pc) of the injury events involved children aged under 15 years.

Again, quad bikes (27) led the statistics for the leading cause of injury, followed by horses (9), tractors (8) and motorbikes (6). These four agents (50) accounted for over 70pc of all incidents. More than 60pc of the incidents occurred in Queensland.

Source: AgriFutures Australia

 

 

 

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  1. Natasha Wing, 15/09/2020

    Whilst any farm death is tragic, producers get frustrated hearing how ‘dangerous’ farms are, as opposed to bush walking, surfing, crossing a busy road, playing sport, driving a car, etc, etc. Because lets face it, we all know accidents can happen everywhere.
    Isn’t it time we came up with something productive and proactive?
    Many industries have a resource where you can find out a basic summary of fatal and debilitating incidents so that you can reflect on your own business, carry out a risk assessment and determine if that could possibly happen on your farm and if so, if there is anything you can put in place to prevent or eliminate it occurring.
    Maybe as part of this platform there is an opportunity to launch ‘Farm Safe Central’ where farmers and producers can find out information as well as share stories of ingenious and innovative solutions they have put in place to mitigate risks.
    Unfortunately we all need reminders of how easily something that we have been doing all our lives can go wrong to reduce complacency, but it is about time it was done in a positive light.

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