AS harvest starts to build momentum, Safe Farms WA executive officer Maree Gooch is encouraging farmers to look closely at their on-farm safety.
Ms Gooch, previously a farmer herself, said Safe Farms WA focused on helping farming enterprises to enforce safety measures to protect people and businesses.
“Safe Farms WA helps to make farming business compliant with WorkSafe,” Ms Gooch said.
“Paperwork is proof that you, the business owner, are trying to make a safer working environment and working towards compliance.”
Ms Gooch emphasised that everyone had a different view of common sense and it was important for all to understand farm safety measures.
She said at harvest fatigue was a challenge, with pressure applied by the demands of time, weather and the markets.
“The pressure of fitting it all in and getting the work done can affect how people look at safety,” Ms Gooch said.
She said it was important to ask what was being put at risk and what were the consequences.
“As we run our farming business, we might rush something, be just that bit tired, continue for another hour because the conditions are good and compromise our safety,” she said.
“The consequences are large for both businesses and their employees.”
Ms Gooch said other safety hazards this harvest season include dust, fires, heat, exhaustion and mental health.
“If any of these hazards occur and there isn’t something implemented to deal with them, then accidents can occur,” she said.
“Looking out for each other is vital on so many levels as we are all working under pressure and people should remember to press pause and take the step back.”
The safety of staff, family, neighbours and the local community is the overriding consideration of grain grower Ben Wundersitz as he prepares for harvest each year.
Mr Wundersitz, who farms on South Australia’s central Yorke Peninsula, injects considerable effort and resources into preparing for and minimising the risk of a potential harvester fire.
A thorough fire prevention and action plan is employed, involving briefings with staff to ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities prior to and during harvest.
“It really is important to have a plan with your staff and actually chat about what it might look like if we have an incident,” said Mr Wundersitz, who owns and manages the Anna Binna farm business comprising 6000 hectares across nine properties.
For more than 20 years, Anna Binna has produced lentils – considered to be one of the more at-risk grain crops – but in that time a major fire has been avoided.
Mr Wundersitz, who has been speaking at Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) harvester fire workshops in the southern region, attributes this to formulating a plan with his employees and adhering to it over harvest.
“Lentils are very profitable and an important part of our rotation,” he said.
“We have learnt to recognise the conditions during lentil harvesting when we need to increase our vigilance in terms of fire safety and we have procedures around cleaning down machines and monitoring fire danger to manage this risk.
“Ceramic coating has previously been used to cover turbo manifolds and exhaust pipes on harvesters, which kept the temperature at just over 100 degrees, well below the ignition point of lentil dust.”
All paddocks have a fire break sprayed around the edge and, at the start of harvesting each new paddock, the ‘clean’ headers do three laps around the edge, creating an area of about 50 metres with a low fuel load.
The aim is to harvest into the wind so any material that may accidentally be ignited, lands on harvested ground.
Mr Wundersitz said they ran two chaser bin units, each fitted with 1000 litres of water storage and pumps, as well as two of their own firefighting trucks, equipped with fire protection clothing and fire blankets.
Only experienced operators drive the trucks.
A diesel-powered air compressor is mounted on the harvester comb trailers, which is used to blow off the headers as regularly as every hour in some lentil crops, with a focus on the engine bay.
“I encourage investment in a decent diesel compressor – you can blow off a machine in five minutes,” Mr Wundersitz said.
Fire knockout bombs are zip-tied around the engine bay, which explode with a white foam if they are ignited by fire.
Headers are also fitted with water and powder fire extinguishers on the ladder and the engine platform.
“We have a plan that if there’s a large-scale incident, we would aim to get our machinery to the edge of the paddock where there is a better likelihood of it not getting burnt out,” he said.
Mr Wundersitz said he employed this measure following the 2015 Pinery, South Australia, bushfire in which significant machinery losses were incurred in that region.
He said when making changes to the harvester, it was important to refer to the manufacturer’s warranty and seek independent advice to determine how modifications could affect this.
“Also, keep your insurance agents up to date with regards to equipment you have and how you have prepared to reduce risk for harvest – and, of course, keep them up to date on your expected yields,” he said.
Mr Wundersitz has made considerable investment in firefighting and prevention technology and recently installed weather stations on his property, in partnership with neighbours, to assist in making informed harvesting decisions based on the Fire Danger Index (FDI) conditions.
The stations provide live monitoring of weather conditions during harvest.
“In times gone by you might have had a small handheld weather station, but this is the next level of technology which gives a higher level of compliance,” he said.
“Ultimately we want to abide by the harvest code of practice.
“Now we have access to that technology, it’s easier for us to make informed decisions.”
