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New COVID-19 requirements for farmers

NSW farmers preparing for the upcoming harvest season must also prepare and implement a COVID safe plan.

This includes the need to maintain traceability of contact information by QR code or written records in the event of two or more staff carpooling as well as signing into and out of the business.

Chair of the NSW Farmers’ Association Yass Branch, Carolina Merriman said as the harvest season approaches it’s important that farmers work together with NSW Health to get COVID-19 test results to farmers as fast as possible so they can continue working.

“Then to the farmers still working with the health authorities – to make sure their workers and employees are getting tested,” she said. “It’s just such crucial times that everyone gets tested.

“We just hope that during this pandemic we can all work together.”

Australia is gearing up for a nationwide bumper crop season, which is set to be 13 per cent bigger than the 10-year average.

“We’ve been very lucky with the rain and the timing of the rain,” Carolina said. “The preparation that [farmers] have put into their crops has really come off this season, which is really exciting.”

“It’s good that farmers can have a season like it because they have been doing it tough and you’ve got to take the good with the bad bits,” she said.

There’s plenty of challenges during farming outside of a worldwide pandemic with droughts, bushfires, labour shortages, mice plagues, and locusts just to name a few. “Farmers seem to be able to work together with everything that’s thrown at them, and this is just something else that is thrown at them,” Carolina said.

“We are trying to work together with everyone to make sure the harvest season goes as smoothly as possible during this pandemic.”

The Farm Safety Advisory Program recently held a webinar with speakers from SafeWork NSW, NSW DPI, NSW Health and NSW Farmers to assist farmers in this very situation.

A new initiative by Essential Energy regarding their aerial marker program, updates on oversized vehicle movements, the latest on staff and contractors moving across state borders, and what happens within a business if a case of COVID-19 is detected, were some of the topics covered by the presenters.

The recordings of the webinars are available to farming businesses by contacting the NSW Farm Safety Advisory Program through email: nswfarmsafety@nswfarmers.org.au.

Brianna O’Rourke

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