The Vygard Farm Safety pack covers the four things that actually go wrong on a solo farm shift: nobody knows which field carries which hazard, machinery goes out without a pre-use check, a job runs over and nobody notices, and the phone has no signal when it matters. It does that with hazard-zone acknowledgements, per-machine pre-use checklists with a completions log, a safe-task timer that escalates when a declared job runs overdue, a directory of opted-in neighbours the worker can request aid from, and automatic fall and impact detection. Where there is no cellular signal, SOS routes over a paired satellite communicator into the same escalation chain.
Why farming needed its own pack
Agriculture has the worst fatal injury rate of any UK industry. HSE reports around 30 worker deaths a year, at a rate roughly 21 times the all-industry average. What makes it unusually hard to cover is not the hazard list — it is that the work is overwhelmingly solo and overwhelmingly out of range. Quad bikes in remote fields, livestock work in a single-person yard, grain stores and slurry pits with nobody in earshot.
That breaks the assumption most lone-worker apps are built on. A panic button is only as good as the network under it, and on most UK farms there is no usable mast for most of the working day. A generic safety app fails at precisely the moment it is needed. The Farm Safety pack is built the other way round: assume no signal, assume no colleague, and assume the nearest help is a neighbour rather than an ambulance.
Hazard zones and machinery checks
Farms carry hazards that are fixed to a place rather than to a task. A bull in one field, a calving cow in another, slurry, overhead power lines, a fragile roof. The pack lets those be tagged to the field or area, so a worker entering gets the warning before they are in it and gives a one-tap acknowledgement. Each acknowledgement is recorded, which is what turns a verbal briefing into something you can actually evidence.
Machinery works the same way. Per-machine pre-use checklists for the quad, the tractor, the telehandler and the chainsaw, with a saved completions log behind them. That is the PUWER and LOLER evidence most family farms are keeping on paper, in a folder, if at all — and the log is the part that matters when somebody asks how you know the machine was checked.
The safe-task timer and the neighbour directory
The safe-task timer is the module that does the most work in practice. A worker declares the job before they start it — back paddock, two hours — and if they have not closed it in time, the alarm fires automatically with their location. Nobody has to open an app in a crisis, which is the failure mode that defeats every panic button: the worst incidents are the ones that leave you unable to reach for a phone.
The neighbour network is a directory of opted-in neighbours a lone worker can request aid from in one tap, with their location attached. It is a request, not an automatic page — a neighbour is not an emergency service and the pack does not treat them as one. But a rural 999 response averages twenty minutes or more, and the farm next door is usually five minutes away with better access through the right gate.
Alongside those, automatic fall and impact detection raises the alarm when the worker cannot. It is generic impact and prolonged-stillness detection rather than a machine-specific detector, with a cancellable thirty-second countdown so a phone dropped on a concrete yard does not cry wolf.
SOS when there is no signal
This is the part that decides whether any of the rest matters. Where the farm has no cellular coverage, SOS routes over a satellite communicator the worker already carries — a paired Garmin inReach, SPOT or Iridium device — into the same escalation chain as a phone alarm. Where the worker's phone supports Emergency SOS via satellite, Vygard points them straight into it rather than pretending to replace it.
Agriculture is one of the industry service packs built into the Vygard app: download Vygard, sign in and choose Agriculture at first launch, and the farm modules load automatically. Download it at https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/vygard/id6773709259.
Frequently asked questions
- Does the Farm Safety pack work where there is no mobile signal?
- Yes, with a satellite communicator. Where cellular drops, SOS routes over a paired Garmin inReach, SPOT or Iridium device into the same escalation chain as a phone alarm, and where the worker's phone supports Emergency SOS via satellite the app points them into it. The safe-task timer also protects a worker out of range, because an overdue task escalates on schedule from the platform side.
- Is there a quad bike or ATV rollover detector?
- No. The pack uses generic automatic fall and impact detection — a hard impact or prolonged stillness raises the alarm with a cancellable thirty-second countdown — rather than a detector tuned to a specific machine. For quad work the safe-task timer is the stronger control, because it fires whether or not the impact was detected.
- What happens when a worker requests neighbour aid?
- The request goes to the opted-in neighbours in the farm's directory with the worker's location attached. It is a one-tap request for help, not an automatic page and not a replacement for 999 — the escalation chain to named responders and emergency services runs independently of it.
- What compliance evidence does it produce?
- Hazard-zone acknowledgements and machinery pre-use checklist completions are both logged, which gives you a dated record against PUWER and LOLER duties and the lone-working controls a risk assessment has to evidence. It replaces the paper folder rather than adding to it.
Related articles
Last updated 2026-10-08