Rural Readiness: Farm safety focus of event
Butler County farmers, who provide food and goods to community residents and businesses, often face danger when traversing main roads in their tractors and heavy farm equipment.
“We have a job to do and it's not a 9-to-5 job,” said James Thiele, a member of the Butler County Farm Bureau and dairy farmer in Cabot. “All the food has to start somewhere.”
This week is Rural Roads Safety Week, and the Butler County Farm Bureau started it Sunday with a Rural Road Safety and Agricultural Awareness event at Superior Ambulance Service in Grove City.
The state Farm Bureau, county farm bureau and others in District 15 teamed up with Superior Ambulance to provide 10 educational booths focused on different aspects of farm safety.
Road safety was at the forefront of the event, because tractor roll overs are a common cause of injury and death in rural areas, according to Doug Dick, Superior Ambulance chief.
“Tractor rollover is the number one cause of death in agriculture emergencies,” Dick said. “Number two is entanglement in a vehicle, because these vehicles are big; they can't be cut with a normal rescue tool.”
The biggest takeaway from the event was to let farm vehicles on the road have their space.
Nikole Stuchal, owner of Stuchal Farms in Slippery Rock, was stationed by a tractor standing about 10-feet high hauling a large field farmer parked in front of a minivan at the event.
Visitors could climb into the front seat of the van to get perspective on how little visibility they have while trailing behind. For this reason, Stuchal said motorists should not attempt to pass a tractor and risk an accident just to save a few minutes.
“Whether or not it's safe, their thought is 'I've got to pass,'” she said. “The fields are not that far away from each other, they should wait for it to pull off.”While the main focus of the event was on rural road safety, another was educating youth about farms, Dick said.The heavy farm equipment and the pigs, goats, chickens and rabbits helped do that job.“Agriculture education is not taught in all schools now,” he said. “This is meant to be a family event so kids can come and see things maybe they have never seen before.”Brittany Speer, district co-chairwoman of the Young Ag Professionals and of Har-Lo Farms in Jefferson Township, brought a pig and some goats from her farm to the event, which people could pet and learn about from the farmers present.“This way they can understand what a farm animal is,” she said.Education, Dick said, is valuable for agricultural awareness and essential for road safety.“If we can prevent one person from having an accident, we are doing our job,” Dick said.
