WorkSafe planning one thousand farm inspections before the end of the year

With agriculture still over-represented in workplace fatalities, WorkSafe is implementing a proactive approach to protecting farm workers this spring.

New Zealand’s workplace health and safety regulator WorkSafe, will be carrying out around 1,000 planned farm visits across the country between October and December this year, focusing on the sheep, beef and dairy sectors.

The initiative is part of a broader strategy to reduce serious harm in agriculture, which continues to record some of the nation’s highest rates of fatalities and injuries, despite improvements following workplace health and safety reforms over the last decade.

WorkSafe’s spring inspections will centre on high-risk areas such as the handling and storage of hazardous agrichemicals, the operation of vehicles and heavy machinery, as well as the overall safety culture on New Zealand farms.

In addition to assessing how well farmers are managing risks, inspectors will also be gathering insights into regional and sector-specific challenges in order to make an appraisal of the support and resources needed across the industry.

While inspectors will have the authority to issue directive letters or improvement notices where serious risks are identified, WorkSafe emphasises that the main focus will be on collaboration rather than on enforcement, and farmers will be contacted in advance to arrange visits at suitable times during the busy spring season.

According to WorkSafe Area Manager Carl Baker:

“Our focus is primarily on engagement, and we encourage farmers to make the most of the opportunity to ask our staff questions and get a worthwhile indication of how they are measuring up”.

The inspections come as the agricultural sector continues to grapple with sobering safety statistics. According to official WorkSafe data, there were 16 fatalities in the industry in 2024. The sector also recorded over 1,500 serious injuries involving absences of more than a week away from work.

Despite employing only about 6% of New Zealand’s workforce, agriculture consistently represents nearly a quarter of all acute workplace fatalities and serious injuries nationwide.

Under its Agriculture Strategy 2024-2026, WorkSafe is dedicating roughly a quarter of its targeted frontline activities to farming, with the spring visits being among the first major initiatives of the strategy, which is aimed at driving measurable improvement in reducing harm on farms over the next two years.

The strategy places strong emphasis on partnership with the industry, as well as data transparency, with the intention of channeling feedback from inspections into initiatives such as Safer Farms – a joint effort between WorkSafe, ACC and industry partners which was launched back in 2015.

A particular area of focus during this inspection period will be vehicle and machinery safety, especially with the ongoing issue of quadbikes, which are an essential piece of equipment for farmers, being a leading source of serious harm incidents.

Indeed, quads remain one of the most dangerous pieces of machinery on New Zealand farms, with rollovers on steep or uneven terrain posing a persistent threat to farm workers.

And although the number of notifiable quadbike injuries has declined over the past decade and a half, from around 60 in 2010 to just over 20 in 2023, fatalities do still occur regularly.

WorkSafe’s official position on the issue is that crush protection devices (CPDs) should be installed on quadbikes and that such control measures would be considered best practice within the industry.

These simple rollover bars can significantly reduce the likelihood of a rider being trapped or crushed by an overturning quadbike, which has the potential to maim or kill, especially given the remote and sometimes inaccessible nature of many of these incidents, as well as the delayed response and rescue.

The regulator has made clear through its guidance and policies that such devices are now an expectation rather than a suggestion and as such, whether or not an employer has implemented these measures to reduce the risk of harm would be a significant factor during potential prosecution if an accident involving a rolled quadbike did occur.

Information published recently by Farm Without Harm, a Safer Farms initiative, illustrates the variety of risks still confronting farm workers today.

In one case, a quadbike towing a calf feeder trailer rolled over on uneven ground, demonstrating how load distribution can affect vehicle stability, while another incident involved entanglement in dairy shed equipment, where inadequate guarding led to a worker’s clothing becoming caught in moving machinery.

Livestock handling also remains a frequent source of injury, as shown in a recent case where a worker was struck by cattle while loading livestock onto a truck. Structural risks have also come to light, such as a silo collapse, as well as routine maintenance issues, with a tractor fire likely having been sparked due to birds nesting under the hood.

These are just some of the risks confronting farmers and farm workers on a daily basis – all of which require adequate risk management, training and a strong safety culture, rather than a “she’ll be right” approach, in order to reduce harm.

By adopting a proactive and cooperative strategy however, WorkSafe aims to strengthen the sector’s collective understanding of workplace health and safety standards, in order to drive systemic level improvements across the industry and to effect such change.

Image credit: Molly