By the time you read this, another half term will have passed, and my children should be safely back at school.
Shortly before the break, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) published a reminder of the dangers for children on farms, urging adults to keep them safe.
They pointed out that eight children lost their lives on farms in the five years to March 2022, with the majority struck by moving vehicles.
See also: Lantra launches online training to keep kids safe on farms
My stomach turns just thinking about this awful statistic, partly because I know that my children play in the farmyard and are therefore at risk.
Children on farms is a moral maze I struggle to get my head around. The statement from the HSE’s principal investigator that working farms are “no place for children” will anger many.
For thousands of children, the farm is their home, and their house is literally slap bang in the middle of it.
Although the law says no child should be sat on agricultural machinery under any circumstances under the age of 13, for many farm children some of their happiest memories will be time in the cab with a parent.
During harvest, a Tupperware dinner in the tractor might be the only time they see Dad. If most fatalities happen due to children being hit by machines, surely they are safer strapped up on a seat inside?
But would any other industry apply this logic? Would a builder be allowed to take their child to the site and tell the boss: “It’s OK, because they will be sat in the digger”?
Would a fisherman or an oil worker take their child out to sea because otherwise they wouldn’t see them for weeks on end?
Although our circumstances are different, if we want to stop the fatalities, we have to do things differently.
If the government is serious about resolving this, one of the best things they could do is extend the 30 hours free childcare provision to all farming families with children aged two and above, regardless of employment status and income on paper.
Many farming families don’t qualify, but both parents are working outside, and the children have to come with them.
As I found, this tends to work OK when they are babies and can be carried in a sling or strapped in a car seat, but as soon as they start walking it’s a minefield.
The other problem is time. When farming is a 365-day a year job, many farmers simply don’t get to spend quality time with their children, on or off the farm.
Solving this requires a dramatic cultural shift, and even a shift in profitability to enable recruitment of more staff or holiday cover.
There are no quick fixes, but at the moment we are relying on a combination of common sense and luck to keep our children safe – and sadly that means that sometimes accidents will happen.
The question is, do we want to keep defending the status quo and pleading our exceptional circumstances, or should we try to make things better?
At times it feels like farming is an industry in decline, so it is vital that we instil the love of farming in the next generation, and being on the farm is a key part of this. But above all else, we must prioritise keeping our children safe.
