Padraig Hunt and Mikey Murphy were crowned this year’s winners of the Safe Family Farm School’s competition at the National Ploughing Championships in Screggan, Tullamore, Co Offaly.

Mikey Murphy and Padraig Hunt are sixth-year agricultural science students in St Michael’s College, Listowel, Co Kerry.

Under the guidance of their agricultural science teacher Fiona Griffin, they came up with the concept of designing a map of their farm that contained all the hazards or potential hazards on the farm, indicating the danger they possess by using a colour scale on the map.

The students said that their idea stemmed from all the stories they’ve heard of people being involved in farm accidents.

“These stories fuelled our ambition to create a map that would not only give visitors, farmers and employed workers a clear and accurate outline of the farm, but would also highlight danger zones, which could result in death or serious injury to the unsuspecting person.

“We decided to produce a map of a family farm that is colour coded in specific areas to symbolise the risk that these areas hold.

“The aerial map has a key with two colours; orange and red.”

Orange areas

Orange represents an area that possess a medium threat but is still capable of inflicting serious injury. Red represents an area which possesses a serious danger, which, if approached carelessly, can result in death, they said.

Examples of orange areas include female animal pens and storage areas for round bales. Examples of red areas include machinery yards, manhole covers, bull pens and slurry storage tanks.

“On our map, we have also included a list of chemicals used on the farm.

“This is to assist the emergency services so that if they arrive at the scene of a chemical accident, they know what chemicals may be involved.”

Both students said that what really stood out to them about farm safety in Ireland is that it often takes an accident to happen in order for anything effective to be done to prevent a future accident.

“While we understand that you cannot prepare against every possible farm accident, we strongly believe our idea will be successful in helping reduce the number of people who are killed or seriously injured on farms annually.”

The students plan to digitalise the map as this would allow for easy changes to be made as the farms develops.

The Safe Family Farm’s Schools competition is a joint initiative between ESB Networks and The Irish Farmers Journal. We would like to thank ESB Networks for their continued support in this joint initiative.