Tuesday, March 25, 2008 8:54 PM CDT
Safety awareness week puts focus on growing the most important crop
By AMY ROCHKES, For the JG/T-C
This year, the Farm Bureau Safety and Health Network’s Agricultural Safety Awareness Week is dedicated to farm safety education with a particular emphasis on children. The theme of the week, “Growing the Most Important Crop,” emphasizes making farms safer for farmers, their family members and employees with special emphasis on children.
People of all ages, but particularly children, are at risk of injuries on the farm. Educating adults about reducing risks to the children in their care is critical to preventing farm incidents and deaths.
Farm Bureau members are using their personal experiences — whether as a youth leader, parent, grandparent or other family member — to help spread the word about Ag Safety Awareness Week. Their messages about the importance of farm safety are more hard-hitting than ever before — reflecting the sad reality that 100 children die in farm accidents every year in the U.S., and many others are injured, often seriously.
Appearing in a variety of media including public service announcements, newspaper ads and billboards, Ag Safety Awareness Week messages tug at the heartstrings with the goal of encouraging positive behavioral changes on the farm.
An excellent example is “Shirley’s Story,” written by Minnesota farmer Scott Winslow, father of Katie Winslow, a high school student who is one of the national spokespersons for the week.
“Her name is Shirley because she surely could get hurt. She surely could break an arm or a leg, and she surely might die.
“Shirley is eight years old. She loves living on her family’s farm and playing outside. It is fall and Shirley’s family is harvesting corn. One morning, the rest of the family goes in for breakfast, but Shirley isn’t hungry so she stays outside to play.
“While she is playing she sees the grain wagon sitting in the shed full of corn and decides it would be fun to play in it. So Shirley climbs into the wagon and plays all through breakfast.
“Her uncle comes outside and pulls the wagon that Shirley is in over to the grain bin to be unloaded. As he starts up the power take-off (PTO), Shirley screams that she is in the wagon, but her voice is lost in the noise … she cannot reach the edge of the wagon.
“As the corn starts to flow out of the wagon, Shirley is sucked down with it. Soon her uncle sees Shirley’s shirt and runs to shut off the PTO, but her little body was crushed by the weight and pull of the corn.”
The moral of the story: Never play in a grain wagon…corn can have air pockets that break and suck you into them.
In addition to grain safety, members of the Farm Bureau Safety and Health Network emphasize keeping children safe around tractors and livestock. The network consists of professionals affiliated with Farm Bureau that share an interest in identifying and decreasing safety and health risks associated with agricultural and rural life. For more information, visit www.agsafetynow.com.
Amy Rochkes is manager of the Shelby County Farm Bureau.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
