Farm Safety Week 2025: reflecting on safety challenges in agriculture

This week is Farm Safety Week.

The week is led by The Farm Safety Foundation (Yellow Wellies) – and we’re marking the occasion with a series of blogs talking with Harper Adams University staff examining why the week is vital not only for our staff and students – but for the wider agricultural community.
First up is Harper Adams Head of Health and Safety, Matt Davies.

Farm Safey Week is important for us here and every person in the wider farming community as it is an opportunity to discuss, reflect and understand the safety challenges that the industry faces.

At Harper we will be welcoming Kit Hopley on Thursday 24 July to the Frank Parkinson Building.

Kit will give his time to discuss the accident that changed his life and that of those around him.

We’ll be taking the opportunity to think about farm safety films that we can create for all users of farms – here and elsewhere.

As a University, what do we do with our students to emphasise the importance of farm safety?

We work proactively with our students to outline the specific hazards in our own industry.

By talking about the accidents that students know about from their own lives, and those that tragically occur in the wider industry – we can understand, and therefore effectively control the wide range of hazards encountered in farming.

We use an induction package to address the main causes of accidents and their associated control measures and rules, which cover cattle handling and vehicle operation along with many others.

There’s even an assessment of the students after their induction – which gives us a safer farm and an assurance that knowledge about accessing and operating on our farm is passed onto to all; farm skills can only be booked once a student has passed the assessment.

How do we work with our staff to emphasise the importance of farm safety?

The induction mentioned above is the same for all who wish to access the farm, and is being made even easier to access and monitor remotely.

We work closely together, having open and honest conversations about what we see, what we can do and how we can improve when it comes to safe operations on the farm.

A hi-viz policy has been introduced for all pedestrians on the farm, with farm staff having hi-viz workwear.

More widely, how can people make their work on farm safer?

We can learn from the tragic accidents that occur in the industry, by being aware of moving vehicles at all times, being safe as a pedestrian, by wearing hi-viz and not becoming distracted.

Also – safety around cattle by the appreciation and knowledge of flight zones and escape routes is critical.

Critically, we can all be safer, by all consistently operating with a safety-first mindset, including taking a moment before any task or operation to check that all is as it should be.