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 more than sixty Myerscough agriculture and agricultural engineering students, as well as some foundation learners, apprentices, and gamekeeping and conservation students, engaged in the Yellow Wellies Farm Safety training day. They 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.

The interactive ‘Introduction to Farm Safety’ training session adopts a unique approach to learning and has been developed by the Farm Safety Foundation specifically for agricultural students at land based colleges and universities to raise awareness of the dangers of working in agriculture.

At each of the four scenarios, the group had to work out what had happened at each one, decide what immediate action should be taken in each case and agree what measures should be taken to prevent the accident happening in the future. Upon completion of the four scenarios, students then engaged in a discussion on First Aid and also heard a real life story, before sitting a short review exercise under exam conditions and completing a post-event evaluation.

The scenarios were: Livestock – Crushing injury from working in a pen with cattle; Transport – pedestrian being hit by Moving Vehicle; Machinery & Chainsaws; and Overhead Power Lines.

Craig Thompson, Head of Agriculture at Myerscough College, said: ‘’Many thanks to the team 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.’’

For more information or to donate to the foundation go to http://www.yellowwellies.org/