Ethan Braund
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Woolwich Observer
The Canadian Agricultural Safety Association is promoting safety for the more than 65,000 grain and oilseed farms across the country this August.
From August 11 to 17, CASA is hosting its annual BeGrainSafe Week to raise awareness about the dangers associated with grain, grain handling, grain storage, and related issues.
Laura Ferrier, an agronomist with the Grain Farmers of Ontario and a farmer near Alma, is very much aware of the importance of grain safety.
Over the years, the 35-year-old farmer had her approach to safety change when she experienced a significant loss to someone she knew due to a farm-related injury. This experience led her to join the Wellington County Farm and Home Safety Association, with the goal of making safety a top priority.
“Farming is often a profession where we do a lot of work alone, when we are crunched for time, when we’re tired, and those things all combined are kind of the perfect storm for an accident to occur,” noted Ferrier.
Various dangers come with working with grain, Ferrier told The Observer, including entrapment and engulfment in grain bins, which can be akin to being trapped in quicksand, potentially causing suffocation. Falls from height are also a hazard.
The risk of fire and explosions is also a concern due to the accumulation of dust.
Still, the most common type of injury is machine-related, according to a report by Workplace Safety & Prevention Services.
Sixty-three per cent of agriculture fatalities were machine-related, and the leading machine-related injuries were machine rollovers, run-overs and entanglement, according the organization.
Safety is not only important for the farmers, but also for children and visitors to farms, who should make sure to think of safety precautions, said Ferrier, pointing to an incident where small children who were on a farm playing in a grain trailer and suffocated.
“This was probably 10 or 15 years ago, but it has happened where kids are playing in grain and things go completely wrong,”she said.from grain bins or gravity wagons or grain trailers, because you just are never, never sure.”
That is why Ferrier said Farm Safety Days are so important, adding the Wellington County Farm and Home Safety Association puts on events for farm and non-farm kids and adults.
“Because some of their friends likely are living on a farm, and to never, ever go into a grain bin or a gravity wagon would be my major message to them. Because you don’t know if all of a sudden it’s going to get filled with grain – the farmer there isn’t expecting to have kids around these areas,” said Ferrier.
Though there is a time that you might think “this won’t happen to me,” she emphasized that it can happen to anyone at any time.
“If you can, try to limit the hazards and mitigate those hazards. But it does happen, and it can happen,
“I think a lot of members in the farming community are aware of somebody who has been injured or has died on a farm, and we need to keep that kind of in the back of our minds, that farm safety is a huge topic to be aware of,” noted Ferrier about the importance of grain safety.
“To make sure that we all come home at the end of the day, that’s the main goal. Everybody goes to work and is safe throughout the day and then makes it home to our families at the end of the day.”
