02-08-2025
Farm safety: Children have 'potential to change cultures and behaviours'
The "influence" children can have in changing "cultures and behaviours" around farm safety and risks "cannot be underrated".
Alma Jordan, founder of AgriKids, a farm safety educational platform for children created to "engage, educate and empower children to be farm safety ambassadors", told politicians this week that children can be key in creating a "sustainably safer future on our farms".
The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Agriculture and Food held a discussion on farm safety, with representatives including from AgriKids, Embrace FARM and FBD Insurance.
Alma Jordan said that 80,000 children have engaged with the AgriKids programme and said that they are "passionate learners, passionate about farming, and passionate to share their learnings at home and in their community".
"We speak about this need to break the culture, change behaviours, denormalise attitudes to risk-taking - they can help us," Jordan said.
"I have had children as young as four reminding parents to lock chemical sheds, leave the area when agitating slurry; a 12-year-old asking how much a PTO (power take-off) cover was so she could buy her dad one with her confirmation money."
She told the committee that children have the "absolute capacity" to influence for the better and "create this much-needed change".
Jordan is urging people to stop sharing "vanity over sanity" imagery and videos of children on farms.
"This topic needs common sense but also compassion and compromise. We need to work with farmers, listen to them," she said.
"Understand the uniqueness of a farm as both a workplace and a home, what are the challenges that are getting in the way, and find a work around."
Minister of State for farm safety, Michael Healy-Rae, recently announced that the Department of Agriculture is seeking proposals for projects which promote children's and young person's safety awareness on farms for the next five years.
The department is providing funding of €200,000 from its dedicated farm safety budget for 2025, with an option to extend the contract for a further four years.
The initiatives must be delivered by November 2025.
Alma Jordan, welcoming the recent call, told the committee however that asking for school farm safety initiatives to be conducted in what would be considered the "off-season" for this topic - between September and November - is "not at all an ideal or sound investment for these funds".
"Pre-Christmas is simply the wrong time of year for farm-themed lessons and will be difficult to get optioned when competing with back to school, Christmas activities, and mid-term breaks.
"So we do respectfully request a consideration be given to times of the year for any such upcoming funding opportunities," she said.
She recommended that spring and summer is a better time of year for these projects.
Embrace FARM co-founder Norma Rohan has said that farm safety "must be more than just physical safety".
"A tragedy on the farm doesn't just affect an individual - it sends shockwaves through the family, the business, and the entire rural community.
"Farm safety must be more than just physical safety. It must also embrace emotional, mental, and relational wellbeing.
"From the stories we hear daily, it's clear: a silent pandemic of grief, trauma, and isolation leading to mental health difficulties is sweeping through our rural communities."
Rohan told the committee that not just farmers, but contractors, processors, agri-food businesses, policymakers and more in the agri-food chain must all play a part in farm safety and wellbeing - so that it is a shared responsibility and "does not rest solely on the shoulders of farmers".
FBD Insurance representatives told the committee that its own claims' experience is closely in line with published statistics around farm accidents.
The most common and serious accidents involve farm machinery, farm vehicles, falls, livestock, and slurry.
A number of the Oireachtas committee members highlighted the dangers of farm vehicles, and the risks involved with children operating them.
Alma Jordan has called for competency-based testing for children before they can legally drive a tractor.
Tractor and machinery use accounted for almost half of all farm-related deaths in the 10-year period from 2015 to 2024 with 79 people killed, 12 of whom were children, according to the Health and Safety Authority.
Kate Tobin, chief financial officer of FBD, told the committee that around 10 years ago, "we saw some very high levels of accidents and high claims experience".
"We would have been seeing about 1,000 accidents a year, we've seen that reduce now to in the region of 800," Tobin said.
"That's still quite high, but we have certainly seen a reduction over time."
