In 2012, a research project titled ‘Review of skills and training in the vegetable industry’ identified that Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) was a skill weakness among vegetable growers. This project was designed and implemented to assist the vegetable industry address this issue.

There is a moral and legal obligation for businesses to provide a safe place of work. This project has sought to understand the barriers to safe work in the vegetable industry and to develop a suite of specific resources for vegetable growers to enable them to implement improved workplace safety.

The objectives have been met with a new range of innovatively packaged resources, approximately 1,200 files of information for the vegetable industry, provided on an easy to use carrot shaped USB to 944 vegetable growers across Australia, called VegWHS.