Farmers are being urged to keep themselves and staff safe when doing routine jobs with vehicles after a farm employee was crushed under a quad while travelling on sloping terrain with a spray tank fitted to the front of the vehicle.

WorkSafe has launched a myth-busting series taking aim at the top 10 tall tales doing the rounds about improving health and safety on New Zealand farms.

Nick Barclay, from WorkSafe NZ says while much media focus is on quads, they are not the only problem. 

While the Health and Safety legislation debate raged in Parliament, inspectors from WorkSafe NZ were out talking to farmers. One was Rural News reporter Peter Burke who owns a small ‘life sentence’ block in Horowhenua.

The southerly blast in April was a reminder to much of the country that winter is not far away.  Let’s hope we get a bit more mild autumn weather before winter kicks in.

In April two people died on farms in ‘workplace’ deaths – one was a boy aged 14. And in Waikato in April a toddler nearly drowned in dairy farm effluent.