Irish agricultural contractors have begun a project which will seek to work safety practices across farms in this country – and have applied for funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to make inroads on this topic.

In a statement yesterday (Monday, April 19), the Association of Farm and Forestry Contractors in Ireland (FCI), outlined its intentions for its project, dubbed the “Farm Contractor to Farmer Safety Knowledge Transfer Initiative”.

Image source: Shane Casey
Image source: Shane Casey

“At FCI we have just completed our detailed application for funding under the latest European Innovation Programme (EIP),” the contractor organisation said.

Under the association’s proposed project, a pilot group of FCI contractors and a panel of dairy farmer clients aim to develop a “change strategy based on a practical discussion mechanism – to allow these safe work practice messages to be communicated to their farmer clients in an open and non-judgemental way”.

Highlighting its hopes of securing funding from the Department of Agriculture for the project, the FCI statement outlined why it believes contractors are best-placed to communicate such important messages:

“In practical and tangible terms, the 1,500 farm contractors on the FCI database will work on average, across three farms per day.

Image source: Shane Casey

“This amounts to 4,500 farmer and farm contractor interactions each day or 27,000 farmer and farm contractor interactions each week of the working season.

“Given a working year that comprises of an average of 30 weeks of direct farm work, this equates to over 800,000 farmer and farm contractor interactions each year, across 137,000 Irish farms.

“This high level of annual direct interactions between farmers and their farm contractor provides a unique opportunity for farmers to embrace safer work practices by following the advice provided by their farm contractor,” the association argued.

forage harvester food fci
Image source: Shane Casey

“This is the basis of the FCI Farm Contractor to Farmer Safety Knowledge Transfer Initiative being promoted by the Association of Farm and Forestry Contractors in Ireland,” the FCI concluded.