More than 700 claims for farming injuries were reported in Wanganui from 2011 to 2013 - costing our accident compensation scheme almost $2 million.
According to ACC, claim numbers were highest in 2012, with 267 new claims and 438 active claims.
The figures include injuries to workers on sheep, beef, dairy cattle, poultry and other livestock farms, as well as those involved in fruit, vegetable, grain, plant and crop growing.
The total cost of active claims was also highest in 2012 at $762,000. The numbers dropped off slightly last year to 245 new claims, and 415 active claims. The total cost of active claims was $695,000.
Experts say farmers and farm workers needed to take responsibility for their own safety to bring the figures down.
Farmworker James Hemopo, who claimed ACC after being attacked by a bull on Siberia Station near Taihape in June, said workers needed to use common sense and not engage in risky behaviour.
"Sometimes you might not want to walk an extra 200 metres so you take the bike, which is all good until you get halfway up and get stuck and flip over or have to reverse around close to a fenceline," he said.
Mr Hemopo, who was very sore and off work for a week after his mishap, believed more also needed to be done to upskill workers and teach them about safety, particularly around machinery.
"I did a quad bike course when I started out which taught me heaps, but I don't think there's anything around like that now. Employers need to push that kind of thing more.
"I've worked on farms since I was 15, but Siberia Station are the first employers I've had that have had a real health and safety push."
Land Based Training academic and compliance co-ordinator Frances Borrie said courses focused strongly on safety so trainees entered the workforce aware of safe practices.
However, "boys being boys" occasionally led to issues such as students racing on quad bikes, she said. In such instances, students were removed from the farm and returned to the classroom for more health and safety lessons.
Nationally, the number of new ACC claims for farming injuries was highest in 2012 - up 2745 year-on-year to 20,565. In 2013, the number of new claims dropped slightly to 20,417.
Active claims followed a similar pattern, up by 2548 to 31,286 in 2013, and down slightly to 31,233 in 2014.
The total costs of active claims were, however, highest last year at $52.5 million.
The government introduced regulatory agency WorkSafe New Zealand in December last year, tasking the agency with achieving a 25 per cent reduction in workplace deaths and serious harm by 2020.
WorkSafe national programmes support and design manager Francois Barton said the disproportionately high number of farming injuries and fatalities needed to be brought down.
"There were 51 fatalities reported to WorkSafe last year," he said. "Twenty of them were in agriculture - two were children - that says to me that not enough progress is being made."
It was ultimately up to farmers, not the agency, to improve the situation, he said: "We don't ride quad bikes, we don't use chemicals and we don't operate machinery. Farmers do those things so it's up to them to do them safely."