Safer Farms wrote a guest blog post for Yellow Wellies in the UK during their 2025 Farm Safety Week about the experiences of health & safety on New Zealand farms.

As the UK and Ireland continue to grapple with the persistent challenge of reducing injuries and fatalities in agriculture, it is both timely and instructive to look beyond our own borders for inspiration.

New Zealand, a nation with a similarly rugged rural landscape and a deeply ingrained farming culture, is pioneering a number of bold, collaborative initiatives aimed at tackling harm on farms. While the contexts may differ, the underlying risks and the human cost are strikingly familiar. By examining the work of Safer Farms New Zealand and, in particular their introduction of crush protections devices (CPDs), there is a lot that we can learn about sector-wide leadership, innovation in safety, and the power of community-driven change.

So let’s say Kia ora and greetings to Luisa Osborne and her colleagues at the Safer Farms team in Aotearoa New Zealand.

“We’re a small team based across the country, many of us on farms ourselves. We partner with the farming industry to work together on reducing harm on our farms, with a goal of making sure farmers come home safe at the end of every day."

We’re a member-based organisation, made up of industry partners (such as meat processors, levy bodies, rural banks, and rural insurance brokers) as well as owner-operator farmer members. We work together by putting resource and expertise into tackling our key harm areas.

Our Farm Without Harm strategy was launched 3 years ago. It has a clear vision: Every day farming people protect one another from preventable harm.

Our priority focuses are the four highest harm areas in New Zealand’s agricultural sector:

- psychosocial risks resulting in diminished wellbeing

- harm experienced while working in and around vehicles and mobile plant

- muscular stress and injury caused by livestock handling

- harm caused by exposure to agricultural chemicals and airborne risks

A major focus for us has been on farm vehicles, especially ATVs/quad bikes. On average there are 11 deaths linked to quad bikes and side-by-sides every year, with rollovers accounting for more than half of those.

Too many farmers and family members are dying as a result of ATV-related accidents.

We know ATVs are real work horses for farmers, and as a sector, we are working hard to help make existing vehicles safer. This work involves strong and aligned leadership throughout the sector and the supply chain.

In 2024, one of our members, Rabobank, came to us with an idea to incentivise farmers to install crush protections devices (CPDs) and help prevent more fatal rollovers. We put a call out to other industry organisations and members, and we soon had enough funding to pilot an incentive programme that gives farmers greater access to roll protection devices.

The Safer Rides initiative saw 153 farmers receive a $400 discount on a crush protection device, helping to make their existing quad bikes safer. Farmers were invited to apply for the scheme on a first-come-first-served basis, and it was over-subscribed within 48 hours of the launch. Demand exceeded supply and we continue to look at ways to grow the initiative.

Applicants told us that they wanted to install a CPD to protect their family and workers on quad bikes. A number of applicants had already experienced a rollover themselves or knew someone else who had.

We were blown away by the response to the voucher scheme. From responses, it was clear that cost is one barrier to installing safety devices.

Additionally, the nationwide campaign led to a significant increase in farmers opting to buy roll-over protection without the discount too. With an estimated 80,000 quad bikes on New Zealand farms, there’s still a long way to go.

We continue to look at ways to help reduce harm when using vehicles on farm. In June this year our Safer Farms team went to New Zealand’s biggest farming event, Fieldays at Mystery Creek, to connect with the farming community and test out a new virtual reality (VR) ATV training tool designed to test decision-making skills when using bikes.In partnership with New Zealand VR company G Factor, for the first time, New Zealand farmers were able to trial this exciting innovation. The technology takes you through scenarios which are based on real life incidents, in which farmers have to make decisions in the moment and see how those decisions played out. All three scenarios are based on real life incidents that have happened in New Zealand or overseas, involving ATVs, which really resonated with those who took part.

Going forward we will always have a focus on farm vehicles and later this year we will also be focussing on preventing injuries from working with animals such as sprains, strains, and head and back injuries.‍