With a shared vision to bolster the sustainability of agriculture by putting people and communities at the forefront, this innovative, inspiring collaboration is #PlantASeedForSafety’s first step in a global vision to help bring rural people home to their loved ones all over the world.

Check out our media release here. 

Case study

The problem

“As Head of Corporate Affairs and Sustainability at Syngenta, I was looking at ways to bring the company’s global sustainability commitments to life in Australia and New Zealand. We operate in rural and regional communities, and I was seeking organisations that could connect Syngenta with these areas to support their sustainability and resilience. We were looking at the mental health space, the physical health space and the farm safety space. I’d got to know Alex through the Syngenta Growth Awards – she’d won the Community and People category in 2020 – and so #PlantASeedForSafety was an obvious choice for us to partner with to tackle the farm safety side of things.

As a way of combatting some of the unhelpful stereotypes that often accompany the topic of safety, we wanted to achieve two things 1) to engage Syngenta staff in the farm safety journey beyond just ‘box-ticking’, and 2) to extend the farm safety message outside Syngenta and into the rural communities in which we operate.”

The approach

“We established a three-year partnership between Syngenta and #PlantASeedForSafety in 2023, and created an internal Rural Health, Safety & Wellbeing Committee to both engage Syngenta staff and help build our capacity to extend the farm safety message. Comprised of a number of representatives from various regions across Australia, with Alex’s guidance and creative input, the Committee is responsible for both the design and roll-out of a series of engaging activities per year. The broader Syngenta team is then responsible for launching those activities within their respective communities.

Alex’s passion, expertise and unique approach were invaluable in helping shape our activities. She not only understands the data and facts on farm safety, but she also knows how to shift perspectives and engage people in meaningful ways. Her storytelling approach creates real connections, and her messaging is simple and powerful. While many farm safety initiatives provide useful resources, the challenge is in making them engaging enough for people to act on, which is where #PlantASeedForSafety excels.

A standout project was the ‘Colour Between The Lines’ competition, where children in rural areas coloured-in an illustration featured in Australian Community Media’s newspapers during National Farm Safety Week.  With a significant number of entries, this was a great way of engaging young people in rural areas and inspiring them to think about the importance of health, safety and wellbeing. But the value went even further – as just having the illustration on the dining table was a great way to encourage entire families to have conversations about safety. This project, and others including the #PlantASeedForSafety Pow-Wow and the #PlantASeedForSafety Promise are just a few examples of the sorts of low cost, high impact activities that we’ve been able to bring to life.” 

The impact

“Internally, and off the back of #PlantASeedForSafety’s inaugural ‘Germinators Workshop’ (a bespoke workshop specifically designed to give Committee members the tools to advocate for health, safety and wellbeing) there was a significant shift in the way the Committee thought and spoke about what safety was and is all about. With safety often thought of as a dirty word, or a topic to be avoided – when the Committee first started talking about safety, the conversation was largely anchored to the assumption that it’s inherently boring and difficult to influence. It didn’t take long for that narrative to shift, and for the Committee to start talking about fun, engaging ways of inspiring people to take action.

Externally, I’d like to think that through the projects we championed as a Committee, we helped ‘plant a seed’  in the minds of rural people think about safety a bit more, to speak up or to respectfully call something out if they saw something that wasn’t safe. Safety can often be thought of as a dirty word, or a topic to be avoided –  but #PlantASeedForSafety helps change people’s perspectives and take away that fear factor.

Any organisation looking to engage closer with rural and regional communities and wanting to make real change in farming communities would benefit from partnering with #PlantASeedForSafety.”

 Jaelle Bajada, Syngenta Head of Corporate Affairs & Sustainability (outgoing)