Personal Column

Safety training is of utmost importance for employees working on dairy farms, who deal with safety hazards on a daily basis, such as large animals, machinery, and chemicals.  While many farms in New York bring in safety specialists to provide annual safety training to employees, for many new employees this is not until months into their employment.  The author wrote a series of articles for her regional team’s newsletter with the goal of motivating employers to provide basic safety training during new employees’ onboarding period. The articles highlighted existing materials farm managers can use for safety training and an included easy how-to guide, showing that farmers are indeed capable of providing the safety training themselves and in a more timely fashion. 

The articles were published in the August 2019 and February 2020 issues of the Ag Focus newsletter, which is distributed to 691farmers, consultants and extension agents via email and hard copy.