Catherine Velisha: It's never you, until it is
Education helped Werribee grower, Catherine Velisha overcome her fear of 'getting it wrong' with farm safety.
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My name is Catherine Velisha and I'm Managing Director of Velisha Farms.
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My Grandfather and his brothers, they started farming here in 1939 and they started
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as dairy farmers and as things evolved, they changed to horticulture.
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I think good safety actually means good business and it's a benefit to productivity,
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because when you're constantly looking at your processes and your people,
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what it does is make sure that you're running as effectively and as efficiently
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as you can, so we see it as a benefit to our business, not a cost.
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We obviously have a packing facility which is lot's of machinery
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lots of moving parts lots of people.
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On farm you've obviously got really dangerous equipment like tractors and harvesters,
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so horticulture and agriculture is one of the most dangerous industries.
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That is always front of mind with us.
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I think fear is a huge barrier to people taking on a safety journey within their businesses.
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Industry and people who have maybe started taking that journey what
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we need to do is help other businesses have access to people who will help them
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and meet them for where they are.
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So it's no longer something to be fearful of but an improvement onto your business.
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I think horticulture is such an evolving industry that probably doesn't get spoken
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about a lot so I think the biggest impact that we’ve seen in our business is,
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it's education, it's giving that approachable, understandable,
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real life knowledge to people so they can implement.
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My advice to farmers is don't be afraid.
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There's people out the that want to help you and make sure that you educate yourself
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and your people to help build capacity.
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I’ve decided to take on that journey and with that
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comes the responsibility of keeping my people safe.