31 July 2025
Regional Area Manager for North Queensland, Angelo Rigano's monthly agribusiness tip
The moments in the paddock that could have turned into something much worse were in the spotlight this past month with National Farm Safety Week held between 20 and 26 July.
This year’s National Farm Safety Week campaign, Second Chances – Who Knows How Many You’ll Get?, highlighted the close-calls that happen on rural properties everyday and how to prevent the next ones from resulting in life-altering consequences.
It was sobering to read Farmsafe Australia’s Safer Farms Report 2025 which revealed in the first half of this year Queensland farms recorded 2 fatalities and 50 injuries – the highest number of farm injuries in the country – on the back of a rise in farm fatalities and injuries in 2024.
There’s still time for the agricultural industry to turn 2025 around and create safer farms to ensure those fatality and injury statistics do not rise any higher.
I’m doing my part by sharing five tips to improve farm safety:
- Create a culture of farm safety: Farm managers should model safe farm attitudes and behaviours, train and supervise workers around safety issues, and recognise and reward safe practices.
- Inspect farm equipment and machinery: Conduct regular inspections to ensure all your farm equipment and machinery are reliable and in good working condition. If it’s time for an upgrade, QRIDA’s concessional Sustainability Loans could help you invest in new equipment and machinery.
- Handle livestock carefully and minimise animal disease risk: Ensure all workers have a good understanding of livestock behaviour, yards are well-maintained and consider low-stress handling methods. Boost your farm’s biosecurity to not only protect your animals, but also yourself from zoonotic diseases such as Hendra virus. QRIDA’s concessional Sustainability Loans could help you upgrade on-farm infrastructure and improve your property’s biosecurity.
- Maintain good electrical safety: Check for overhead powerlines before operating farm equipment and machinery and avoid and report fallen powerlines which may especially occur following floods and cyclones.
- Learn from your mistakes: Review farm safety incidents, continually update safety plans, and provide ongoing staff training to prevent farm safety issues from recurring.
Thank you Farmsafe Australia for this year’s important campaign and for all of the critical work you do in creating safer attitudes and behaviours amongst primary producers.
