Taking a proactive approach to upskilling farmers and all of our young people working in agriculture, Macra’s Agricultural Skillnet now has four online farm safety modules.

The Safe Agri Skills training modules are available to complete free of charge by visiting www.ifj.ie/safeskills.

The package consists of four core courses – safe livestock handling and management, tractor driving and machinery maintenance, manual handling and emergency first responder and health for farming. Completing all four should take about 90 minutes and you can do them at different times to suit your needs.

We are asking our clubs and members, particularly those involved in farming, to complete the courses.

Positive move

It will be one positive move to improve safety on our farms, that can be easily completed in your own time, as part of a young farmer development group or club meeting or other young farmer initiative.

Those who complete all four courses will be awarded the Safe Agri Skills wallet card. This is something we hope will be sought after in the future by farmers or contractors employing people to work with them.

It should also be something family members who help out on the farm should complete to remind us of dangers we have become perhaps immune to.

Young people looking to work as farm operatives or as drivers for contractors should see it as a must-have for inclusion on their CVs.

The modules address common dangers, good practice and prevention of incidents across all four key areas common to all those present on farms – machinery, manual handling, first aid and livestock.

Training is also available face to face – groups who wish to complete it can contact us in Macra Agricultural Skillnet for further information.

Training in chainsaw use and the safe use of quads or ATVs is also available face to face in addition to the core modules above.

Register your interest with Macra na Feirme so you can be contacted when a course is happening in your area.

Further information on our course offering is available on macra.ie/skillnet.