Students learn farm safety with Yellow Wellies campaign

The Yellow Wellies campaign is organised by the charity, the Farm Safety Foundation, part of rural insurers NFU Mutual, and aims to change attitudes towards farming safely in young farmers, and reduce injuries and fatalities.

Asking the question ‘who would fill your boots if there was an accident on the farm?’, a group of Myerscough College agriculture and agricultural engineering students engaged in the Yellow Wellies Farm Safety training day. Small groups of students were faced with four accidents scenarios in which they had to say what had happened, identify what immediate steps needed to be taken and how the accident could be prevented.

Craig Thompson, Head of Agriculture at Myerscough College, said: ‘’Overall sixty students trained to be more safety aware on the farm. Many thanks go to Tina, Gabby and Joanne from the NFU Mutual Farm Safety Foundation for facilitating.’’

‘’The Yellow Wellies Campaign is excellent as well as it being a very important issue for our students both now and in their future careers.

‘’Thanks also to the farm staff for helping to organise and our staff for helping to facilitate and ensuring students represented themselves well.

‘’Overall it was an excellent learning experience for our students to help reinforce safety issues on the farm and to try and reduce the high numbers of accidents that happen within the agriculture sector.’’

27 farm workers lost their lives in the workplace in 2015/2016 according to the latest HSE Fatal Injuries in Agriculture report. For more information or to donate to the foundation go to http://www.yellowwellies.org/