All provinces and territories · Editable Word template

Agriculture and farm safety manual template

A complete written health and safety program for farms, ranches, feedlots, dairy, hog and poultry barns, greenhouses and nurseries, custom operators and grain handlers that employ workers, wherever in Canada the farm is. It is laid out on the 14 national COR elements and written for the work: tractors and rollovers, self-propelled and harvest machinery, PTOs and drivelines, augers and grain handling, grain bins and engulfment, manure pits and gases, livestock, pesticides, anhydrous ammonia, power lines, machinery on the road, ATVs, dust, weather, the busy seasons, children on the farm and seasonal workers. Section 15 sets out the law of every province and territory side by side, with how far each one’s OHS law reaches a farm, its farm rules, pesticide certificates and young workers. It arrives as an editable Word file you make your own.

A look inside

Sample pages from the manual, marked and cut short. Your copy has no watermark.

Cover with room for your logo and company name

Linked table of contents, laid out on the 14 national COR elements plus a section on working across Canada

Section 3: twenty safe work practices written for farms and ranches, grain bin entry shown

Section 15: how far each jurisdiction's OHS law reaches a farm, its farm rules, pesticide certification and young workers

Appendix A: all 74 documentation questions of the national COR elements mapped

Print-ready permits and forms: the grain bin entry permit shown

What’s in the manual

1. Safety and health policy

A signed, dated policy, the written program, and responsibilities for the owners, managers, supervisors, farm hands, operators, livestock workers, seasonal workers and family members who work on the farm.

2. Hazard assessment, analysis and control

Formal hazard assessments by enterprise and season, the 5 × 5 risk matrix, a critical task inventory, and the farm and field task hazard assessment.

3. Safe work practices

Twenty practices for the farm: visitors and children, tractors, harvest machinery, PTOs, hitching, augers, grain bins, manure, livestock, zoonotic disease, pesticides, anhydrous ammonia, lockout, power lines, roads, ATVs, heights, dust, weather and the busy seasons.

4. Safe job procedures

Step-by-step procedures for entering a grain bin, moving an auger near power lines, clearing a plugged combine, hitching a PTO implement, loading a sprayer, an anhydrous ammonia nurse tank, moving cattle through a chute and agitating a manure pit.

5. Company safety rules

Life-saving rules for the farm (no bin entry while unloading, nobody into a pit after a collapsed worker, seatbelt on with the ROPS up, shut down before you reach in), and a progressive discipline process applied the same way every time.

6. Personal protective equipment

Respirators for dust and mould, chemical PPE from the pesticide label, hearing protection, and the rest of the basic PPE, with fit testing.

7. Preventative maintenance program

Tractors and ROPS, PTO shields, augers and conveyors, sprayers, nurse tank hitches, ATVs and farm wiring.

8. Training and communication

Machinery and bin training, pesticide certificates where the law requires them, orientation every season, and training workers in their own language.

9. Inspections

Inspections of the yard, barns, bins and worker housing, and tractors, augers and ATVs checked before use.

10. Investigations and reporting

Rollovers, entanglements, engulfments, livestock injuries, chemical exposures and near misses reported and investigated.

11. Emergency preparedness

Grain engulfment, a manure gas casualty, a rollover, an ammonia release, a fire, a worker who misses a check-in, and first aid in remote fields.

12. Statistics, records and document control

Bin entry permits, pesticide application records, machinery inspections, orientations and training, kept for the longest period any jurisdiction requires.

13. Legislation

OHS law and how far it reaches a farm, pesticide law and the label, the farm safety associations’ guidance as guidance, and the right to refuse.

14. Procurement and contractor management

Custom operators, contractors on the farm, and buying machinery and chemicals.

15. Working across Canada

Whose law applies, then every province and territory side by side: the act and regulation, the regulator, who the OHS law covers on a farm and where it stops, farm-specific rules, pesticide certificates, young workers, and serious incidents to report and how fast.

Appendix A. COR cross-reference

Every one of the 74 documentation questions in the 14 national COR elements, what it looks for in plain words, the section that answers it, and whether the auditor will also want your records.

Appendix B. Forms

37 print-ready forms that match the manual, each with a form code: among them the farm and field task hazard assessment, grain bin entry permit, tractor and machinery pre-use inspection, pesticide application record, manure pit entry permit and seasonal worker orientation checklist.

Written for the work, not just the province

Farm deaths come from a short list: a tractor rollover, a PTO, an auger, a grain bin, a manure pit, an animal. This manual is written around them, practice by practice and procedure by procedure, in plain words for workers who may be here for one season.

How far OHS law reaches a farm differs sharply across Canada. Section 15 says where it stops, and the manual keeps the company’s rule either way.

One program for every province you work in

Your crews follow the occupational health and safety law of the province or territory where the farm is, not where your office is. The manual sets your company’s rules once and gathers what changes at each border into section 15, so a supervisor starting work in a new province looks up what applies there.

It is laid out on the 14 national COR elements, so it suits a COR audit wherever you certify. Each certifying partner uses its own audit tool, so check it against yours; our provincial manuals follow each province’s audit exactly. No template can guarantee a certificate on its own, and we don’t claim to.

Who it is for

Grain, cattle, dairy, hog and poultry operations, greenhouses and nurseries, fruit and vegetable growers, custom operators and grain handlers who employ workers.

A template is a starting point, not legal or agronomic advice: a qualified person must adapt it to your farm before you issue it.

Lifetime updates

When the law changes, we publish a new edition and email everyone who bought the template. Every update is free, for as long as we publish it.

Version 1.0 October 29, 2026
- First edition, written for farms, ranches and agricultural businesses and laid out on the 14 national elements of the harmonized COR audit.
- Section 15 sets out how far the law reaches a farm, and the farm, pesticide and young worker rules of every province and territory and federal workplaces, checked against the legislation in force on 28 October 2026.