Unpacking the Rural plant Code of Practice: In-field traffic management

This video is about in-field traffic management and is one of a series of educational videos designed to help you use the Rural plant Code of Practice to benefit your business by managing work health and safety risks on farm. There are several other videos in this series including vehicle safety, training and skills and the safe use of technology.

Hello, I'm Mark from Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and today we're talking about the Rural plant Code of Practice and in-field traffic management. And I'm here with Mitch in the Lockyer Valley and I just wanted you tell us a bit about your farm please, Mitch.

Here at Moira Farming in the Lockyer Valley we're family operation in a mixed cropping business so we do a variety of vegetables and some cotton as well.

Rightio, and how many acres have you got?

We own about 1200 and lease and share farm a bit extra, about 2000.

Broken down that 2,000 acres, how many paddocks would that turn into?

It's probably around 50 management units as a round number.

So obviously to access those 50 units around that 2,000 acres there's a lot of roads on the farm and a lot of machinery operating on those roads inside the farm. Traffic management is around about everything that comes through your front gate, whether that's machinery that you're working on your workers are working on or could be contractors coming into farm to do some work for you as well.

So what's some of the hazards that you would have on farm in and around your roadways?

So we've got environmental hazards, we've got mechanical hazards, we've got external hazards and then we've also got biosecurity hazards. So generally our staff have to be trained on the equipment and licensed appropriately. The machinery on public roads has to be compliant, whether that's oversized, registered, roadworthy, all of those things and then there's other aspects.

We have to be mindful of other road users on public or private roads. And our machinery is a bit slower than cars. And in a community like this, people are aware of that. But we have to be extra mindful. And we have to be mindful of our policies like come clean, go clean and that's from farm to farm but also from field to field. We're quite particular about managing our soil movements and seed bank and disease, just trying to keep that to a minimum.

If I was a worker on farm and I've come to start an employment, you've given me induction, but from a traffic management perspective, have you got some rules on farm there, about sort one way traffic or crossing rules, speed on farm?

Yeah, that's right. And we keep it to our speed limits around the farm and in the roads, but for newer staff when they're assigned a field to take a machine to we'll normally give directions as well if they're unfamiliar. How to get there, what's the best way, the safest way, is there an embankment or a wet spot. There's always those little things as a manager you've got to be aware of and make sure everyone's aware of when they're moving around.

Alright, so yeah, you've captured the information for your workers on there, but say I'm a contractor coming on a farm and I'm like the agronomist doing soil testing or you've got someone spreading fertiliser or chemical for you. How do you manage those people?

Yeah, and they've got to respect and comply with our come clean, go clean. That's a main one.

And yeah, it's all a part of the induction, I suppose.

If it's a spray operator, it's all that conversation at the chem shed when we're filling up, OK, here's the field, here's any information they require around that field. Because a lot of fields are different, a lot of crops are different, and that information transfers often packaged into the job that they're doing, whether it's a contractor or an employee.

Look, it's also about protecting your assets on the farm. You've got your pivot irrigator here and there might be a pump attached to that. And same thing, we've got hazards with power lines on farms as well. So we've got high equipment in there. So it's making people aware of all those sort of hazards that you do have on your farm and how to manage those risks when you're operating on them.

The other important part of the day, I suppose, is actually when you finish picking in the field and then loading your produce onto transport coming out of site. Do you have transport people come on the site as well? And how do you manage that with loading equipment?

Yeah, so a lot of the time we'll freight our own produce, whether it's vegetables or cotton or machinery as well. And our forklift drivers will load the product and our truck team will load the truck, you could say. And with machinery, you know, the tractors, if they've got to go on a truck or a new plough has got to go on the truck, well, it's a process. Well, we've all got to learn how to do that safely. And if someone's unfamiliar with loading that machinery or that produce, well, that training has to happen or a supervisor has to be there to assist that.

Yeah, that's right. And look, when you do put a tractor on the back of the float, you know, it's securing that to the float and making sure that safe to operate on road.

Another area that we talk about when we're loading a side of a trailer is, you know, we've got the working side, the loading side, but keeping people away from the other side. We don't want people working over there while you're loading.

So, you know, it's really critical.

Yes.

So we're talking about around the roads, around outside of the paddocks. But once we get inside the paddock there and we might have two or three pieces of plant operating through the paddock there, what do we use for communications between the workers and the operators, the machines?

So in a field, and normally in a harvest situation, there could be cars or trucks or tractors or people in the field working as well, and we've always got to be aware of our surroundings. And if there's blind spots and whatnot, it's always quite a good practice to notify that whoever's in the field that you've arrived or another machine's on site or a utes on site, just so that there's no conflict there that may be unforeseen.

With regards to communication, certainly have our mobile phones, UHF radios, and sometimes in a harvest situation, hand signals. I'll go there, or you stay there, you know, look over there. Something as basic as that is enough sometimes just to maintain distance.

And it's the unexpected movement of machines, and sometimes some of those machines are very quiet, so you could be actually bending over and cutting your head of lettuce off, and you're not hearing it a machine coming behind you.

Because there's other environmental noise around you as well, just having those sort of communications that could be just a tap of the horn or something along those lines.

For sure.

You've got 2,000 acres here and someone was hurt on farm, we're going to call the ambulance to get them some help. Being able to direct them from your front gate down to where you need that help at, how would you manage that as a traffic management and emergency situation?

We always like to have access to the fields. Typically, most of the time when we're working in a field, we're able to get a car there if there was ever a need for an emergency vehicle to gain access. If it's a situation where if the person on site or if there's multiple people on site, if they call for help or they might call a supervisor and then the supervisor could give more accurate directions.

In a community like this, we're often near a road or we're near a house or we're near a landmark, which is quite convenient. Further west where there may not be near a road or a landmark that could be more difficult.

Yeah, so it's important having an emergency plan and obviously for anyone that's on the farm, know, identifying your different paddocks on there because 2008 you're going to say to the emergency service, oh Moira Farm and they're going to go, where's that, what road are you on? So we've got a thing called Emergency Plus App, you know, that gives you some GPS coordinates.

You might have some GPS inside your tractor that might help them get to where you need to be. Or you might have to send somebody and meet them at the front gate and take them down to where they need to be down in the field. Having a good emergency plan is part of your traffic management plan as well.

Alright, thanks for your time today Mitch.

No worries.

Follow the link below to find a great conversation between some familiar faces in the agriculture sector as they step through the key areas of the Code, share their real life experiences and provide direction on where to find more information to help make sure you and your workers come home safe at the end of the day.