WorkSafe, New Zealand's workplace safety watchdog, revealed yesterday 19 people died on farms last year. Of those deaths, 16 involved vehicles.
Farmers aged 55 and over were involved in more than half of the incidents.
''These were mature and experienced people doing jobs they would have done many times before,'' WorkSafe agriculture programme manager Al McCone said.
''Examining vehicle fatalities from the last three years, we find that often the driver/rider had set out to do a fairly routine task like spraying or stock work.''
The WorkSafe figures showed only one farm death occurred in the South last year, when a 35-year-old died after being struck by a hay bale in Gore.
It followed a horror year in 2014 when four people died in farm incidents in Otago and three in Southland.
Two of those involved quad bikes and two involved fertiliser trucks or tractors.
Federated Farmers Otago president Phill Hunt said the deaths showed a need for changing attitudes.
''Any one farm death is a death too many,'' he said. ''We are working towards changing people's attitudes and there doesn't seem to be a simple solution.''
The reason older farmers could be at risk was often because of complacency, he said.
''It's not people being reckless. It's people getting out and doing things day after day after day that they have done for a long time.
''There does have to be an attitude adjustment. We have got to go out to work every day and look at ways of making ourselves and other workmates we have on the property safer.''
Farm work, especially that carried out on farm vehicles, was inherently dangerous and there was no room for complacency, he said.
The industry needed to support a change in how people viewed the work they carried out.
''It's something that is going to take time and it's a whole industry, from corporate employers to people starting new jobs, that need to work together to make our industry safer.''
Mr McCone said many of the farm deaths had common factors, such as people being hit by a vehicle or killed during a rollover.
Quad bikes involved in the fatalities ranged in age and size and were often in sound mechanical condition.
Low tyre-tread depth and underinflated or uneven tyre pressures were noted as possible contributing factors in some cases, WorkSafe said.
''Good practice, like keeping at least 1m from a stream or culvert edges, stopping and dismounting to spray, and working out 'no go' areas on-farm in advance could all help prevent incidents,'' Mr McCone said.
The latest numbers from WorkSafe showed 15 people died in agricultural incidents from January 1 to October 20 this year, including a 72-year-old thrown from a bulldozer in the Clutha district in April.