No child bans on farm

 Jacqueline Rowarth erroneously concluded (Rural News, Feb 17) that kids will be kicked off farms as a result of a new health and safety law due to be passed this year.  Rowarth incorrectly stated that under the new law “liability” would be “extended to farm workers’ families – their partners and friends”.   She also fails to note that farmers already owe a duty under the current law to ‘other persons’ on a farm – and that includes children.  The new law will make this duty clearer, but it’s a duty that already exists.   

Now let’s take a look at the reality of kids on farms.

Farms are unique, active workplaces.  Farmers choose their work because it’s a way of life.  Children are a fundamental part of this and WorkSafe appreciates and respects what a vital component of farming family life is. Farmers’ kids become farmers themselves, often because they love the lifestyle they’ve grown up in, and WorkSafe has no interest in seeing this change.

But farming is a risky business: children are being killed by such as farm vehicles, by livestock, by falling into effluent ponds or offal pits.  These are the kinds of risks WorkSafe is focused on and plenty of farmers are telling us they’re focused on them too.   

The good news is that these risks can be managed; not by wrapping kids in cotton wool and banning them from farms but by fencing ponds, covering pits, creating ‘safe kid zones’ in dairy sheds and having kids ride in the cab, not the back of the ute or on a trailer.  It’s just common sense. Thus farming parents can still safely keep their kids with them during hectic work times, and WorkSafe supports this 100%.

Children also die in swimming pools, rivers, beaches, on roads and on driveways.  But keeping kids safe on farms and in the city isn’t an either/or situation.  Everyone has a responsibility to watch over children, and we can all learn from examples being set by many farmers.

Rowarth’s comments were particularly disappointing given that Rural News’ facing-page editorial urged farmers to “clean up their collective act” to address agriculture’s “shameful record” in health and safety.  The paper’s editorial supported the aims of the recently launched ‘Safer Farms’ campaign – similarly Federated Farmers Waikato provincial president Chris Lewis and Gisborne/Wairoa provincial president Peter Jex-Blake. 

We don’t need to wrap children in cotton wool to keep them safe.  Instead, known risks on farms must be understood and managed practically by those best placed to do it – farmers, not because it’s the law but because it’s the right thing to do.  

• Francois Barton is WorkSafe New Zealand’s national programmes manager.