Irish farm safety start-up launches partnership with UK co-op

Farm safety simply cannot be spoken about enough, with agriculture being the most dangerous industry in Ireland accounting for 50% of workplace fatalities, despite only accounting for 5% of the workforce.

Similar statistics are seen right across the EU and in many developed countries.

AgriGuardian, an Enterprise Ireland backed, Limerick-based startup has been on a mission to change this.

This month, a significant partnership has been launched with First Milk in the UK.

The partnership sees First Milk providing access to all of their members to AgriGuardian free of charge.

Background

Founders James Power and Kevin O’Flaherty met studying engineering in University of Limerick.

James is from a farming background and saw the opportunity while studying his advanced certificate in agriculture at Kildalton college.

“I remember seeing farm fatalities graphed by year and it was flat, this struck me as in my opinion the HSA has ran one of the most successful education campaigns seen in Ireland and I had seen machinery and practices become more modern and safe,” he said.

This led James and Kevin to found AgriGuardia n and start to tackle the problem. Farming however posed unique challenges:

Variability – No farm, task or day is the same;
Busy lifestyle – A solution had to integrate with low conscience effort to adopt.

How it works

AgriGuardian is currently aimed at protecting the most vulnerable farm goers (Over 65s and under 16s), which account for over 52% of farm fatalities in Ireland.

Each feature directly addresses a leading cause of fatality and injury.

Alert Zones – Guardians can map out areas on their farm in the app using their smartphone, each zone is designated either a Safe Zone or a Danger Zone. If a Protected User enters a Danger Zone or leaves a Safe Zone all Guardians are alerted on their phone. Typical areas that are mapped out are the slurry pit, where dangerous animals are housed etc;
Proximity Warning – When activated, if a protected user comes within 50m of Guardian the Guardians phone will alarm. This feature is especially useful around machinery/tractor operations;
Anchoring – When activate if a protected user moves further than 30m from a Guardian, their phone will sound. This is useful when brining younger children onto to the farm.

Each feature can be seen in use on the AgriGuardian YouTube channel.

The features are delivered using the users smartphone. For users who do not yet own a smartphone, the same protection can be achieved by use of an AgriGuardian Smartwatch.

Feedback to date has been very positive.

James said: “My 10-year-old daughter felt it made her feel safer out and about on the farm.

“A safety app like this is long overdue. Having five children, four of which like nothing other than going out to help on the farm.”

First Milk partnership and future plans

First Milk are a regenerative co-op who are owned by British family farms. They produce award winning dairy products particularly for the B2B market.

The partnership sees First Milk providing access to AgriGuardian to all of their members free of charge.

This is a strong signal that demonstrates how important First Milk consider their members and how they are trying to protect the farmers of tomorrow.

It was rolled out over a week during First Milk member meetings with demos and question and answer sessions across the UK.

AgriGuardian hopes to mirror partnerships like this right across the island or Ireland in the coming months.

“We want to work with milk suppliers, insurance companies and agri-suppliers everywhere, for our solution to be effective it needs to be in as many hands as possible.

“Our mission is to save lives and we approach commercial deals like this one with gaining users as the number one focus not profit margins,” the founders added.