A new rural and farm safety mobile unit is now in development.
Once completed the educational tool spearheaded by Agriculture For Life will travel the province to educate, encourage and promote farm safety to students and farm families.
Ag For Life CEO Luree Williamson says this project has been three years in the making.
“We’re going to build The Rural and Farm Safety Mobile Unit it will be available to travel throughout the province,” says Williamson. “We’ll go into schools, communities and all types of different groups from children to adults and we’ll be working on delivering farm safety messaging.”
Agrium donated $650,000 to make the Rural and Farm Safety Mobile Unit possible.
Agrium Senior Director of Sustainability & Stakeholder Relations Doug Beever says they are proud to be a part of this initiative.
“Just very pleased to work with Ag For Life with all of the partners to bring safety programs that reduce farm incidents that make people safer so that they can go home at night like everyone wants to and just be safe on the farm.”
The funding will also go towards the development of a farm safety app, which can be used by farmers and students alike.
Williamson says they need one more key ingredient to get this unit on the road.
“We’ll now be looking for partnerships of other organizations that would like to be a sponsors of the operation of the unit so we can be on the road and keep the wheels on the bus turning.”
Alberta Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil Carlier says this is a tremendous initiative.
“I think whatever we can do to ensure farm safety for our farm families whether it be the farmers, their children or workers. Whatever we can do to raise awareness of farm safety and doing this is going to be a really good thing,” says Carlier.
The unit is expected to be on the road by September of next year.
