Video report: Farm safety expert in Iowa hopes to reach more farmers by traveling to fields and events with a large trailer packed with safety equipment. The trailer will give farmers a chance to see the equipment for themselves and learn best practices.
Far fewer veterans are facing long waits for disability compensation after the Department of Veterans Affairs spent the past six months focusing on the backlog, including mandating case worker overtime
Over the past year, Katie Kuntz, a reporter working with the nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization IowaWatch, has been developing a documentary focusing on the lives of two Iowa mothers who
In October, Modern Farmer magazine published a piece about one Illinois farming community’s tribute to Kyle Hendrix, who recently passed away from cancer.
Jake Moore, a friend of Hendrix,
Iowa’s small farms are on their own when it comes to work safety, even though farmers suffer more fatal occupational injuries than any other kind of worker in the state. Limited Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforcement and coverage favors large farms, leaving the rest on an honors s
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is responsible for overseeing workplace safety, but the organization is handicapped when it comes to dealing with small farms and agriculture sites that handle grain. OSHA’s federal guidelines prohibit it from enforcing regulations through inspection
In July, a 55-year-old man working for Premier Cooperative in Sidney, Ill., suffocated and died after becoming trapped in a grain bin filled with corn. His death marked the first grain-bin fatality for Illinois this year, but with expected large crop yields coming, more farmers may be at risk.
The deadliest year for grain-bin workers on record was 2010, when at least 26 workers died throughout the country, according to grain-bin entrapment data from Purdue University. There were more than 50 total incidents that year. The frequency of accidents was so alarming that the Occupational Safety
Limited Occupational Safety and Health Administration enforcement and coverage favors large farms, leaving the rest on an honors system in which dangerous farm practices fly under the radar until a serious, and often fatal, injury occurs.
There have been more than 900 grain-bin entrapments throughout the country since 1964, according to data compiled by Purdue University’s Agricultural Safety and Health Program. More than half of those incidents were fatal.
OSHA’s federal guidelines prohibit it from enforcing regulations through inspections on both family farms and farms that employ fewer than 10 workers. Consequently, many places left vulnerable to grain-bin accidents are neglected.
Farm deaths accounted for more than 30 percent of all occupational fatalities in Iowa between 2001 and 2011, an IowaWatch analysis of data from the Iowa Fatality Assessment and Control
