Maintaining agricultural machinery and buildings in the quiet winter months will make farming safer and reduce breakdowns, farmers are being told.
Thorough overhauls of kit, from combines and balers to trailers and loaders, avoids valuable time being lost doing repairs out in the fields during busier seasons.
This is according to NFU Mutual Risk Management Services and Farm Safety Foundation, who say incidents can also be prevented if essentials such as trailer brakes are kept in good condition.
With long lead times on many replacement machinery parts, it now makes sense to get repairs and maintenance done well before machines are needed for field work.
Evita van Gestel, of NFU Mutual Risk Management, suggests farmers schedule machinery and building maintenance tasks over the quiet winter months to make the best use of time and ensure all essential checks and repairs get done.
“On many farms - especially arable units - Christmas to March is a quieter time when they can carry out maintenance and repairs to machinery and buildings,” she says.
“Scheduling the work enables you to make the best use of the time available – and means you can save money by hiring specialist equipment like lift platforms to carry out all the farm’s ‘at height’ maintenance in one go.
“You can save even more on hire costs if you join forces with a neighbour to split the costs and getting both farms’ work done at the same time.”
Stephanie Berkeley, of the Farm Safety Foundation, says that winter maintenance can save lives and reduce injuries caused by hazards such as damaged PTO shafts or guards.
“Year after year we see tragic incidents happening on our farms – some of which could have been prevented by just taking the time to stay on top of maintenance,” she said.
“Using the quieter winter months to do those fiddly tasks you’ve been avoiding on buildings and machinery is great, but please do it safely, particularly when working at height.
“Every year farm workers are injured or worse when working at height so it’s important to plan the job and use the right equipment.
"In 2022, falling from height resulted in 1,430 injuries on farms – and every year tragically causes an average of four deaths.
“It doesn’t have to be a massive fall to cause a life-changing or life-ending injury when you fall onto concrete, which is why you should always resist the urge to use an old ladder or a tractor loader bucket.”
Cambridgeshire farmer Tim Papworth suffered two bleeds to the brain and was partially paralysed when he fell from a ladder he was using to replace a light bulb in his potato store.
Tim was rushed to hospital by air ambulance and spent five weeks in a drug-induced coma. “I couldn’t speak and had two bleeds on the brain,” he said.
“I was paralysed on the left side of my body. I couldn’t do anything for myself. The only way I could communicate was by writing notes on bits of paper.
“Thanks to the speedy reaction of the air ambulance, I knew I was going to survive but I was still anxious about how I would function in the future and the effect it would all have on my wife Emma, our children and the family business.”
Tim has made a full recovery, apart from impaired hearing in his left ear, and is now an ambassador for the Farm Safety Foundation.
“As a farming business, we are so much more conscious of safety all the while and it has made me slow down and think about every process every single day,” he said.
“By using my story to highlight the physical and mental impact an injury like this can have on your family and your business, I hope I can prevent this happening to someone else.”
