Behind the Lines - April 2008
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
A three-paragraph story in a local newspaper pointed senior staff editor Don Stoneman to this month's tragic cover story. A young man farming north of Guelph in Mapleton Township had been very badly injured when struck by a large bale that fell off his loader.
That short story started a week-long search for answers to questions about farm safety here in Ontario. We found out that that many farmers do exactly what this young man was doing.
They move three bales at a time with a front-end loader that has a guard which protects them against only two bales. Most of these farmers get away with it. Some have close calls as bales precariously perched on loaders fall off. Our story, all too illustrative of the risks that farmers take, starts on page 12.
Stoneman and fellow writer/editor Mary Baxter concluded that tracking trends in farm accidents is a difficult task indeed. The bad things that happen to proprietors on the farms they own are reported in a hit and miss fashion at best. The story of the young man in Mapleton is likely known to few outside of his township and church. Meanwhile, the farmer is receiving treatment in a rehabilitation hospital. His future in agriculture is uncertain, as is the future of his wife and young family. Our hearts go out to them.
And what about front-end loaders designed to carry large bales? After deadline and our story was filed, David Shanahan, project manager with the Canadian Standards Association, returned a call from a reporter. The Canadian Standards Association does not have a standard for hay forks. Nor does it have a standard for "guards" that prevent a hay or straw bale from falling backwards onto the loader operator. "Our guarding standards have to do with the machine mechanisms around the operation...the drive mechanisms and the moving parts within the machine itself," Shanahan told us.
Unless machinery manufacturers take up the challenge on their own, farmers must make changes themselves, either modifying their own equipment or their own behaviour by not taking risky short cuts when they are under time pressure. Everyone knows that they shouldn't step over a rotating power take off shaft, but lots of people do, someone with the Farm Safety Association told us.
The busy season on the land is starting. So do take due care and necessary precautions. BF
Robert Irwin & Don Stoneman