Unexpected health and safety incidents can happen fast, and they can often happen alone or when help is potentially an hour away.
Agriculture remains the most dangerous industry in the UK. It accounts for around 20% of all workplace fatalities despite employing just 1% of the workforce.
On arable farms specifically, falls from height, entanglement in machinery and being struck by vehicles are among the most common causes of serious harm — grain stores, augers, PTO shafts and reversing telehandlers during harvest all carry real risk. These accidents share one characteristic: they happen in places where help is a long way off.
Prof Stuart Maitland-Knibb, a Helicopter Emergency Medical Services expert, says key findings show that people suffer a significant health inequality because, basically, "you just can't get the care there quick enough."
In rural farming environments, emergency services face delays that urban counterparts simply do not. Distance and difficult access — a grain store down a farm track, a field the length of the county — add time. Time that, in the case of serious bleeding, a crush injury or loss of consciousness, people do not have to spare.
It is not the incident itself that determines the outcome. It is what happens in the minutes that follow, and these minutes matter the most.
This is the reality FarmersAid was developed to address, helping ensure farming people are prepared and able to take action in what Prof Maitland-Knibb calls the "platinum 10 minutes."
"The platinum 10 is where the life is saved. It's about what the person does for themselves in the first 10 minutes that really saves their life."
Developed by RABI with leading experts in remote and rural emergency medicine, the FarmersAid app will put clear, step-by-step guidance into people's hands, helping them respond to the most serious on-farm accident scenarios — including machinery entanglement, falls from height and grain store incidents — in the critical minutes before professional help arrives.
It does not replace calling 999. It supports the response that happens while you wait.
FarmersAid is available to download free on the App Store and Google Play.
