National Farm Safety and Health Week, Sept. 16-22

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig encourages Iowans to keep safety in mind whether working on the farm or traveling through rural Iowa this harvest season. National Farm Safety and Health Week is Sept. 16 to 22 and the theme is “Cultivating the Seeds of Safety.”
“Fall is an exciting time with lots of activity on our farms and traffic on our rural roadways. It is important that everyone is taking the steps to ensure we have a safe and successful harvest season,” Naig said.
“National Farm Safety and Health Week is a great way to focus more attention on these devastating injuries, especially during harvest season when we often see an uptick in incidents. But, it’s also important to remember that agricultural safety and health is an issue all year,” said Brandi Janssen, Director of the Iowa Center for Agricultural Safety and Health (I-CASH).  “Improving safety on any jobsite requires constant attention to ensure that everyone gets home safely at the end of the day.”
Unfortunately, accidents and injuries remain too common within the agriculture industry. Surveillance by the Iowa Department of Public Health shows that while agriculture accounts for just five percent of Iowa’s workforce, ag workers sustained 32 percent of the occupational injuries. In fact, about eight percent of Iowa’s agricultural workforce suffered a non-fatal injury in 2016.
I-CASH works to improve safety and health on Iowa’s farms by establishing and coordinating prevention and education programs. Their efforts include seasonal safety campaigns with information distributed quarterly through Iowa State Extension and Outreach and Farm Service Agency offices, grants to community youth groups for farm safety-related projects, seminars and workshops to diverse rural audiences on a variety of agricultural safety and health topics and a number of other programs.

The following message is brought to you by the Winnebago County Farm Bureau.
National Farm Safety week is Sept. 16-22. It’s a good time to remind everyone of the importance of farm safety.
Many local residents work an 8 to 5 job, but harvest time for farmers often means long days, often times working in the fields, before dawn and after dusk. The autumn harvest brings an increase in large farm equipment on the roads.
While farmers are working around the clock to harvest the grain for the food, fiber, and fuel used in our daily lives, like you, their primary responsibility is to their family.
For your safety, and the safety of farmers on the road, please be mindful of large, slow-moving ag equipment on the road and use extra caution on the road so we can all return home safely to our families.
Last year there were more than 400 traffic fatalities in our state—six of them were farmers, so let’s all do our part to avoid becoming a tragic statistic. That means allowing extra time when commuting, keeping a safe traveling distance between vehicles, and using extreme caution when making a turn.