Agriculture

There is no place for accidents or negligence in the Agriculture industry.

This industry provides an environment where accidents are often severe and irreversible.

• Every day 10 people make a workers compensation claim for an injury sustained while working in the agricultural industry.
• A person is fatally injured on an Australian farm every 3 days.
• In 2002-2003 the agricultural sector made 750 Workcover claims, costing business $34 million.
• Since 1999 50 people have been killed in Victorian farms alone.

The need to meet deadlines, work in harsh conditions for long hours and perform repetitive tasks lead to an environment conducive to workplace accidents.

Rural OH&S training is sporadic and scarce due to the cost of provision, the interruption to the business and the perceived long term value of the training due to the transience of the workforce. There is often a culture in this industry that holds safety training as wasteful, costly, unmanageable and ineffective.

The reality is that the Agriculture Industry today is struggling to attract people into the industry. This, along with the cost and lack of industry specific, effective training courses has led to a shortage of qualified trained staff.

This shortage, together with high worker turnover rates, has the effect of creating a less qualified workforce in general.

The less qualified and trained the staff member, the greater the risk of accident or negligence in the workplace.

The Agriculture industry is in need of training programs that are able to be used repeatedly and which offer employees the facility to be trained in their own time and preferably before they enter the workplace.

Mentor Training (Agriculture) has embarked on an ambitious pilot program to produce a set of modules specifically targeting the most critical OH&S issues in the agricultural industry.