As Farm Safety Week returns for the 14th year, the Farm Safety Foundation (Yellow Wellies) is calling on the agricultural industry to shine a light on an often‑overlooked reality: while fatalities rightly demand attention, serious injuries on farms are leaving thousands of lives permanently changed every year.
Led and funded by the Farm Safety Foundation, this year's Farm Safety Week campaign will focus on the long‑term, life‑changing consequences of serious injuries - injuries that farmers, workers and families must live with long after the headlines fade.
While this year the sector has recorded one of the highest numbers of fatalities in over a decade, thousands more farm workers are suffering injuries and ill health that fundamentally alter their ability to work, live independently and enjoy family life.
Latest figures show around 9,000 workers in the sector are suffering from work-related ill health, with 67% linked to musculoskeletal disorders, while an estimated 8,000 non-fatal workplace injuries have occurred over the last five years.
But, according to NFU Mutual, the UK's leading rural insurer, farm accident claims fell marginally from 894 in 2024/25 to 868 in 2025/26.
Farm safety
While modest, the decline suggests that sustained safety training and awareness campaigns may be beginning to take effect. Notably, there has been a shift among younger workers: those under 40 accounted for 20% of claims in 2025/26, down from 23% the previous year.
However, Yellow Wellies added behind every statistic was a person, and often a family, dealing with the aftermath of an incident that does not have to be fatal to be devastating.
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A new survey of farmers and agricultural workers carried out by the Farm Safety Foundation during May-June 2026 revealed that the biggest fear on UK farms may not be dying in an accident but surviving one with a life-changing injury.
The survey, released for day one of this year's Farm Safety Week sampled 408 farming respondents across the UK. Nearly half of those surveyed aged under 40 (49.7%) said that if they were to have a farm accident, they were more worried about ending up with a disability, compared with 36.6% who said they were more worried about dying.
Older respondents showed a similar pattern, with 51.7% concerned about disability compared to 31.4% worried about death.
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Stephanie Berkeley, manager of the Farm Safety Foundation, said: "When we talk about farm safety, fatalities understandably dominate the conversation, but serious injuries can be just as life‑changing.
"The reality is that there is no such things as a papercut on a farm and the margin between a near miss, a serious injury and a fatal incident is often frighteningly small.
"A fall from height, an encounter with machinery, a vehicle incident - these do not always result in death, but they can leave someone living with chronic pain, reduced mobility, disability or an inability to continue working.
"That impact does not stop with the individual; it affects the family, the farm business and the community as a whole."
