Safety Management
Supplemental Revenue Assistance, or SURE, is a disaster payment program created in the 2008 Farm Bill. It takes the place of previous disaster programs. SURE is meant to supplement privately purchased crop insurance, not replace it.
Those farmers who don’t sleep well on windy nights sometimes have nightmares. One of the worst is being pulled over by an Indiana State Police motor carrier officer. If you’re normal, your heart rate increases, your palms get sweaty and your mouth gets dry. You naturally fear the worst.
The neighbor pulled two hay wagons behind his hay baler, behind the tractor. That was the 1970s. Whether it was legal then doesn’t matter. Fact is that “three’s a crowd” behind a tractor or truck on Indiana roadways today.
So you think you know all there is to know about using slow moving vehicle signs? Unless you read Indiana legal code at bedtime every night, you might be surprised.
Four years ago Jack Maloney, Brownsburg, and his son, Peter, and other helpers were working on their grain leg. Their mission was to switch from handling corn to binning soybeans.
The most extraordinary safety forum ever comes to life on Thursday, Sept. 16, at the Beck Ag Center. It’s located at the Purdue University Agronomic Research Center north of West Lafayette.
John Rice starts his day long before he leaves his house. It’s about coordinating when inspections are due, making best use of his time and mapping out the day.
Stored grain in poor condition can be a recipe for death. More quality problems in storing grain this past season resulted in more problems with loading it out. There were more than 38 grain entrapments recorded in the U.S. in 2009, the highest number since 1993, according to a report from Purdue University’s Agriculture Safety and Health Program. Forty-two percent of those entrapped didn’t make it out alive.
Don’t let the harvest rush end up with a rush to the emergency room. Or worse yet, don’t let it be your last rush.
Statistics don’t lie. On average since 1969, 32 Nebraska farmers have died from farm accidents each year. Reversing that trend, especially for young farm machinery operators, is part of a day’s work for University of Nebraska Extension educators Bill Booker and Sharry Nielsen. This spring, they led seven two-day youth tractor and farm safety training courses held around the state.
The frustration was evident on their faces. As young FFA tractor operators struggled to back a four-wheeled trailer into a tight spot, they became impatient with the process.
You may have been hauling wagons and other farm implements for years, but is your understanding up to date regarding Minnesota transportation laws for farm vehicles, also known as implements of husbandry?
The Michigan Department of Agriculture’s Geagley Laboratory in East Lansing is a busy place.
There was never a doubt in Mark Minnicus’ mind that he would come back to the family farm. After graduating from Delphi High School, Mark entered into a two-year program at Muscatine Agricultural School in Muscatine, Iowa. But his goal was always to come back to Carroll County.
Mark Minnicus, Delphi, has been given moments in his 22 years that allow him to grasp just how fragile life can be. At 13, he was diagnosed with a grapefruit-sized brain tumor. The tumor was benign, but Mark still endured extensive brain surgery.
The rate of childhood injury on farms and ranches has declined by nearly 60% since 1998, an encouraging sign that research and public awareness efforts are making an impact in one of the nation’s most hazardous industries.
I know, safety rarely makes exciting reading. You may be tempted to bypass this article; a few months ago I might have, too. But 2010 dealt some firsthand lessons that have made me take safety much more seriously.
What’s the biggest improvement Dennis Carnahan made for the 2011 crop season? Was it a new planter? Maybe a different tractor? Or perhaps it was add-on equipment for his planter to help him do a better job?
Casey Campbell stood on top of grain in a small bin. She knew someone was about to turn on an auger to empty grain into a wagon. Who could blame her if she felt a little nervous? A farmgirl, she had heard stories about the dangers of flowing grain.
It was a Saturday afternoon in October of 2010 and things were routine on the Kerr farm near Cedar Grove in Franklin County. A couple more truckloads and corn harvest would be finished.
Gideon Nobbe survived a horrifying accident. He’s willing to share his experiences so that it might prevent someone else from going through a similar ordeal. And he knows that even as painful as his incident was, it could have been worse.
Some of you will get enough of a shock this fall when you combine crops and find out they don’t measure up to what you expected. Don’t compound it by letting your grain bin deliver a real shock, one that could injure or kill you or one of your employees.
Joe Price makes it clear that whether you lose a part of your body or lose a loved one or friend from a farming accident, life goes on. You have to find the strength in yourself and find who you are again to realize you can pick yourself up and continue your journey through life.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of Farm Safety 4 Just Kids. The organization has promoted farm safety to more than 6 million people through local programs and education since 1987. Over the past 25 years, FS4JK has established a network of more than 120 chapters across the United States and Canada offering farm safety presentations on a local level. In that time, 35,600 volunteers donated 280,000 hours of time to promote safety on the farm.
With anhydrous ammonia under pressure, safety is always a concern when plumbing and working around application equipment. A new set of voluntary guidelines for plumbing multi-tank anhydrous ammonia systems has been recently developed by a coalition of state government, academia and industry representatives in Iowa.
The plastic, yellow rescue tubes at the Purdue University safety display at the National Farm Machinery Show in 2011 caught this young lady’s attention. Wylie Schweizer began asking questions.
About $6,000 of more than $9,000 raised by the Randolph Southern FFA and Randolph County supporters went to buy tubes everyone hopes never get used. Yet farmers and rescue personnel are glad they’re there, just in case.
Being a thousand miles away can be a blessing when tragedy strikes at home.
You can still buy watermelon and cantaloupe at roadside stands throughout southern Indiana. But if you’re the grower and you want to market your produce wholesale, it’s no longer business as usual. Staying in business today means investing in a packaging facility that meets strict food safety codes.
Jim Sweigart doesn’t even demonstrate the qualities of anhydrous ammonia without full safety gear. He certainly wouldn’t go to the field without it.
Seeing is believing. The only thing better than following the journey of the dummy in these pictures would be viewing it in person.
Nearly 20 years ago, a Nebraska state electrical inspector conducted a series of inspections of electrically driven center-pivot irrigation systems with electric pump motors. The findings at that time were shocking.