When there is an emergency you want to be able to call for help immediately, but that is not always possible in remote areas where telecommunication services are patchy.
Farmers living on isolated properties can wait hours for help after emergency services have been notified.
It prompted the Red Cross to donate 200 personal locator beacons and run first aid courses for farming communities during 2021.
Red Cross resilience project officer Suzi Zivec said the beacons were the size of two matchboxes stuck together and the device could either be hung around your neck or attached to a belt.
"It will definitely save at least one life I would imagine, if not more," she said.
The beacons need to be registered with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), a job that Ms Zivec says takes about five minutes and is very straightforward.
"If you need help you would reach for your beacon and open a little door, press a button, it goes straight to a satellite and down to Canberra within five minutes," she said.
Ms Zivec said the beacons had a seven-year battery life and could find someone within 10 centimetres of where they were stranded.
The devices were handed out in the Victorian Mallee and Wimmera regions, south-west New South Wales, and some to Queensland.
Ms Zivec said the beacons were well received by farmers.
"It's a really good feeling to be able to do something that's so meaningful and beneficial."
Underbool farmer Andrew Willsmore received a beacon and agreed the device would be valuable.
He was not aware of personal locator beacons until he attended a Red Cross farmer first aid course earlier this year.
"There's three of us working all different hours on four different farms. So it's going to be a great, great thing," he said.
Mr Willsmore says phone service is terrible where he farms and it does not matter which provider you use.
"Sometimes you can get a text out but there's a lot of places that you have nothing," he said.
"You may drive to a hill or climb a tree to find a bit of phone service."
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