Twenty-two people have died in farming-related incidents, and the toll has pushed farm safety to the top of the agenda for the sector and its regulators.

The number matters because agriculture remains one of the most dangerous industries to work in, year after year. Each fatality represents a preventable failure, and the cumulative figure has now become impossible for the industry to ignore.

At the heart of the problem lies a cultural issue that safety campaigners have struggled against for decades. "Farmers don't like to show weakness," is how one voice in the sector put it, capturing the reluctance that stops many in the industry from admitting they are struggling, asking for help, or changing long-established working habits.

That reluctance cuts two ways. First, it stops farmers from speaking up when they notice dangerous practices, faulty machinery or unsafe conditions on their own holdings. Second, it discourages them from seeking support for the stress, fatigue and mental strain that so often sit behind physical accidents on the farm.

Fatigue deserves particular attention. Long hours during calving, lambing, harvest and silage seasons mean operators are running tractors, telehandlers and chainsaws on minimal sleep. Safety bodies have repeatedly linked tiredness to the kinds of incidents that dominate farm fatality statistics: falls from height, entanglement in machinery, and being struck by moving vehicles.

The stoicism that defines much of farming culture compounds the risk. A farmer who would never admit to a colleague that he is exhausted, or that his quad bike has a dodgy brake, is a farmer working one bad decision away from becoming next year's statistic. Campaigners argue the sector needs to treat admitting a problem the same way other high-risk industries have — as a professional strength, not a personal failing.

There is also the question of working alone. Many farm tasks — repairing a roof, entering a slurry pit, unblocking a baler — are carried out single-handed, in remote locations, far from immediate help. When something goes wrong, the window for rescue is narrow. Slurry gases, in particular, kill quickly, and they have claimed multiple victims in single incidents when others have rushed in to help without protection.

The families left behind carry the longer cost. Every death in the figures represents a business losing an operator, a household losing an income, and in many cases a farm that cannot continue as it did before.

Safety campaigners have long argued the solutions are unglamorous but proven: proper guards on power take-off shafts, helmets on quad bikes, planned maintenance on ageing machinery, and no lone working in high-risk jobs such as roof repairs and confined-space entry. None of these require new technology or major capital. They require a decision, made before the job starts, to do the task differently.

The challenge is turning that knowledge into behaviour on holdings where time is short, labour is scarce, and the way things have always been done carries the weight of tradition.

The current fatality count has given the issue fresh urgency, and the question now is whether the industry can translate attention into changed practice. Farmers should expect safety messaging to intensify in the coming months, alongside continued pressure for better reporting of near-misses — the incidents that, properly logged and shared, show where the next death is waiting to happen.