This year’s national farm safety campaign, ‘Second Chances – Who knows how many you’ll get’, was chosen because near misses are more than lucky escapes.
The campaign was rolled out throughout Australia in July, and encouraged farmers to make simple changes to prevent the next near miss.
It was supported by real life anecdotes that ranged from a man with a shattered pelvis after an impact accident with cattle, a toddler in a cattle crush, and a woman with a broken leg after a wether rammed into her.
Farmsafe Australia’s chair Felicity Richards said every near miss on the farm is an opportunity to learn.
“So many incidents are preceded by a ‘close call’,” she said.
“We all have incidents that, on another day or with slightly different timing, might have changed our lives forever.
“I’ve had my own near misses, moments that still make my stomach drop when I think back to them.
“I’ve seen my kids get too close to situations that could have ended very differently.”
Felicity and her husband, Mark, engaged a safety consultant to help them develop plans and procedures for their family and farmworkers.
“My husband and our workers walk into high risk jobs day after day,” she said.
“The data shows that farm safety isn’t just about preventing the worst-case scenario. It’s about reading the signs before they happen.
“If we don’t talk about what just happened and what we did differently afterwards, we’re missing the opportunity to change our behaviour.
“When we share a near miss with a focus on the lesson, we create space for a conversation that can lead to real action — putting on seatbelts in side-by-sides, rethinking fatigue and stress management, changing how we supervise children on the farm.”
In 2023, Australian farmers recorded a historic low in on-farm fatalities. There were 32 fatalities.
In 2024, that rose rapidly to 72 people who lost their lives on Australian farms. It was the highest fatality figure on farms in more than two decades. Of those 72 fatalities, 87.5 per cent of them were male.
For the first time, side-by-side vehicles have overtaken quad bikes and tractors as the leading cause of fatality on farms. This was a major shift in data trends in the past 10 years.
Incidents occurred because of lack of safety precautions — seatbelts left unfastened, helmets not worn, overloaded vehicles, operating vehicles on steep and unstable terrain, and lack of appropriate training and risk assessment around use.
There were 14 fatalities involving side-by-side vehicles, compared to 10 involving quad bikes, and eight people died from tractor incidents. There were five farm fatalities involving aircraft. Most (63 per cent) of the fatalities occurred in people over 45 years old.
Farmsafe Australia partner, WFI Insurance, recorded 1800-plus claims relating to farm vehicle collisions, rolls and accidents in 2024 — including life altering injuries from neck and spinal fractures and brain traumas.
The number of severe injuries and amputations as a result of farm accidents have also risen, and have remained consistently high for more than a decade.
WFI Insurance has recorded a 44 per cent increase in impact related claims — 18.8 per cent of incidents were the result of a person being hit by a moving object and just over four per cent of claims were a result of a person hitting a stationary object.
There has also been a 274 per cent increase in fall related claims, attributed to falls from heights, slips and trips.
Other claims in 2024 also demonstrated increased frequency and severity of crush injuries that have resulted in severe impairing injuries, often involving fencing, farm machinery and cattle.
WFI Insurance has also seen increased third-party claims outside of workers compensation.
Millennials — people aged 25 to 44 years — recorded the highest accident incidents in 2024, at 46 per cent of incidents.
But 15 per cent of injuries collated by Farmsafe Australia involved children under the age of 15 years.
Dairy cattle farming recorded 3.39 per cent of these agricultural incidents in the 2024-25 financial year.
“Everyone has a role to play in creating safer farms, whether it’s by starting a toolbox talk, sharing a story, or pausing before a job to check in,” Felicity Richards said.
“This is about taking steps to incorporate a safety culture, being conscious of the importance of safety, and trying to do better every day.”
In the first six months of 2025, 17 fatalities and 87 injuries on farms have been recorded nationally.