Using the NFU national conference as an opportunity to make its appeal to farming leaders, workers’ union Unite has called for more consideration to be given to safety on farms to cut down the staggeringly high rate of workplace deaths in the industry. According to the Health and Safety Executive, 34 people died in accidents on farms in 2010/11, representing eight fatalities per 100,000 workers in the sector. These figures show the risk of death for those working on farms is four times higher than for a construction worker.

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In a statement, Unite made calls for the government to introduce roving safety representatives, which would visit farms to ensure health and safety measures are being observed. The union said it wanted to ensure that workers’ health and safety is firmly on the agenda during the NFU’s annual conference, which is currently taking place in Birmingham.

However, despite the fact that almost one death per week is recorded in the agricultural sector and farm workers have the highest rate of on-the-job injuries, the government has overlooked the industry’s health and safety record in its haste to ‘ease the burden of bureaucracy’. The government has deemed it unnecessary to warrant ‘proactive inspections’ in agriculture. Although the recent report Good Health and Safety, Good for Everyone identified agriculture as an area of concern, the government has said “proactive inspection is unlikely to be effective”.

Although farming groups have supported initiatives, including safety days, which offer practical information and workshops on farm safety, Unite said more should be done by government to ensure workers are protected. It pointed to the recently published International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Code of Practice, Safety and Health in Agriculture, which also supports the development of a system of workers' roving safety representatives trained and accredited to help employers and workers improve health and safety standards on farms.

Cath Speight, a spokesperson for the union said, “Unite has repeatedly called for the introduction of roving safety reps to visit farms. Other high-risk industries, particularly construction, have seen death and accident rates fall over the years. But this has not happened in agriculture and for many years now Britain’s farms have been the most dangerous workplaces in the land.

“It is the responsibility of the employer, the farmer, to see that all safety procedures and legislation are followed and that all employees fully understand safety instructions, including causal and migrant workers whose first language may not be English and may have difficulty understanding what they are being told. If roving reps could visit and see that farmers are complying with health and safety legislation, we believe this high level of accidents and deaths would be reduced. Unionised workplaces are the safest workplaces.”

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