Disaster Planning – Safety Ag Systems

It’s been a rough start to 2025. Southern states continue to battle record-breaking dry conditions, while the Eastern states are gearing up for heavy rainfall and damage from Cyclone Alfred.

Depending on your location, droughts, fires, cyclones, and floods can be a regular part of life in Australia. However, these all significantly impact agriculture to varying degrees.

And with the seeding season now here, it’s important to have a strategy in place for when Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate.

How to plan for disasters on farm?
This is the one instance where thinking about the worst-case scenario is beneficial when creating a disaster plan. It’s important to have a strategy in place for when things go wrong and are no longer within your control. Such as bushfires, floods, and the current challenges of cyclones and drought.

Disaster planning is usually documented like a risk assessment. Also known as Business Continuity Planning (BCP), it helps a business plan for when things don’t go according to plan. A BCP guides a business to think about issues from natural disasters, pandemics, technology failure, work health and safety, economic and financial, staffing and suppliers.

Your BCP should identify the following:

• How will you sustain the supply chain? Do you need to increase/decrease your pricing?
• How will you manage staffing arrangements and protect staff health?
• What is your communication strategy to workers, contractors and suppliers?
• What are your financial implications? How will you manage cost increases and insurance?
• Do you have a contingency plan and discussed possible outcomes?
• How will you manage, review and update your plan?

Consider what to do amid a specific disaster. For fodder producers who rely on tanks, dams or rainfall for irrigation during a drought, you’d need to plan where you’d source your water from and whether that’s an affordable financial cost.

Recovery after a disaster will vary depending on the damage done, but the better prepared you are, it’s less likely damage will occur. During recovery, take time to think about what you might do differently next time. Remember to add any changes to your plan.

The what, where and when of a disaster is unknown, but with plans in place you’re better prepared to take it on and come out on top.

Read more, from AFIA’s Safety Partner – Safe Ag Systems