This is going to be another one of those lectures on farm safety during harvest time. I usually get at least one good lecture in a year, and for good reason. I know exactly how accidents can happen.
Luckily an accident I had when I was young and immortal had no long-term effects, but it was 100% preventable – like most farm related injuries.
In this issue we have a story on PTO injury prevention. Those things used to scare the heck out of me. It was instilled in me, in graphic detail, what can happen if you get clothing or hair wrapped up in a PTO.
When I was chopping stalks as a kid, I would totally shut down the tractor when I was hooking up the stalk cutter. Dad had told me a story of someone who had gotten their clothing caught in a PTO. He told a similar story about operating a drill press and then another about a grain auger.
Those stories all have a familiar ring to them – someone was being lax around equipment that had the power to inflict devastating injury.
PTOs, augers and drill presses are just one type of injury-inflicting implements that can mess up someone’s day or life. Harvest time is when we pull out the big man eaters – combines and cotton pickers.
These machines were made to pull, thrash, rip and separate. They don’t mix well with people who are not trained to use them or are not continuously aware of their power.
We are often in a hurry to get into the field during harvest, or get that field harvested, or to get down the road to the next field. Take your time, use the guardrails and make sure the equipment is shut down before you get off. Don’t jump from the cab. I hope that sounds reasonable.
According to the Center for Disease Control, between 2021 and 2022, there were 21,020 injuries in ag production, which required days away from work. Most of them were from falls. How many more were unreported?
In 2022, workers in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting had a fatal injury rate of 18.6 deaths per 100,000 full-time equivalents – for all U.S. industries that rate is 3.7, according to the CDC.
Please pay attention to what you are doing, who is around and how the equipment is running, so as not to risk injury or worse.
I once jumped onto a piece of equipment that was not properly secured. It flipped over and I was pinned beneath it. There were people around who were able to help immediately and save me from being maimed. My lack of attention put me and others at an unnecessary risk.
The AgriCenter International has a free program of safety videos to help remind farmers and farm workers to be aware of hazards on the farm at farmsafe.org.
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