After a such a long period of having to catch up on screen in 2D, it was an absolute delight to see so many of our members attend the Safer Farms members hui in person yesterday, in Wellington.

We had a phenomenal line up of speakers whose presentation topics were anchored to ‘system enablers’ highlighted in the sector-wide Farm Without Harm Strategy. Many thanks and appreciation goes to:

• Gerard Vaughn (Lead Project Manager, Farmstrong) who shed light for us on What Farmstrong have learnt about connecting through “Hearts and Minds” and what strategies are working well.

• David Chin (CEO, LIC) who demonstrated The Power of Workplace Culture: Building strong, visible & aligned leadership.

• Lynsey Stratford (Primary People; Nuffield Scholar) who championed the need for us to continually evolve our thinking and challenge our beliefs with her work on Superheroes, not super humans. Challenging assumptions and building capability to support good work, thriving people and great farming.

• Dr. Rebbecca Lilley (Senior Researcher/Lecturer, University of Otago) who used confronting data to demonstrate the value of Learning from fatalities: Focusing efforts through insights & learning.

• Nick Robinson (Strategy & Investment Lead, DairyNZ) for sharing insights and key learnings from the Dairy Tomorrow Project focused on creating a movement of change.

Key Take-Homes

Following each of the presentations we had a discussion session, and it was clear from the energy and engagement in the room that our fantastic speakers provided plenty of food for thought!

Key take homes from the day included:

• When it comes to better health and safety, farmers want to know how to be better farmers, not provided with more information on health.

• Informal praise goes a long way where good health and safety practice is concerned.

• It’s good to challenge assumptions around what we think our business is doing/achieving in the H&S arena (we thought we were doing this, but the reality looks like that).

• It’s also good to challenge our personal ways of thinking about the ‘why’ – Facts vs. Stories.

• How do we fail safely? Many fatalities and injuries occur when workarounds are put in place when things go wrong.

• Put the human at the heart of health and safety. People get killed/injured whilst doing the work that pays for someone’s salary.

And so many more….

Thank You

So we want to say a huge THANK YOU our speakers and our members who participated in our members hui. Your valuable insights, contributions and continued engagement throughout the day made it a great success and we only hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Also, as this was my first hui as CEO of Safer Farms, I just wanted to take this opportunity to say a personal thank you to those of you who attended yesterday for making me feel incredibly welcome, being super helpful and also offering to connect in order to continue to work closely with myself and Safer Farms as we embark on the next step of this adventure! Your generosity of spirit did not go unnoticed.To our members who were unable to join us yesterday – you were greatly missed! But we look forward to seeing you at future Safer Farms events and working with you all to help turn our sector-wide Farm Without Harm strategy from theory into action!

If you have any questions about Safer Farms, or the Farm Without Harm strategy, or would like to support our mahi - please get in touch.

Dr. Lyndsey Dance

CEO, Safer Farms