He was speaking at a ''Would you like safety with that?'' workshop during the South Island Dairy Event in Invercargill last week.
He outlined further what health and safety was not.
''It is not having a folder with the paperwork in, which no-one looks at,'' Mr Watson said.
''It is not something to get around to when you have a day in the office.
''It is not a long list of hazards that no-one reads.
''It is not signs and instructions that people ignore.
''It is not doing the job when you are really tired, grumpy or in a rush.''
During the past eight years 175 people died on farms, and of those 155 were machinery related.
Mr Watson said 17 people died on farms last year.
However, farming-related deaths tended to be under-reported because the statistics did not include deaths from incidents such as on-farm drownings or on-farm vehicle accidents as they were recorded under separate categories.
''The magnitude of the problem is greater than officially recognised,'' he said.
Common injuries which kept people from working for more than a week included accidents from vehicles, cattle and other stock, and falls on the same level because of slippery surfaces or tripping over something left lying around.
He said safety was planning and thinking ahead, as well as communication and observation.
It is important to have records of actions taken to inform or prevent incidents in case WorkSafe asks for them, and that can be as simple as taking a cellphone picture of a vehicle maintenance record, or the white board in the staff room that has the necessary information recorded around staff orientation or training, health and safety meetings, and storing it digitally.
If there was an accident, it was important to have information readily available, with something as simple as a list of emergency phone numbers (some overseas workers might not know 111), and the address and GPS numbers of the property where they are kept by the phone.
''If something went wrong, when do you ring WorkSafe?
''If someone needs to go to the doctor or the hospital, that's a clue.''
