Farmers come together to help friend in need

Oct 06, 2016

Dave Young thought his crops wouldn’t get harvested

By Diego Flammini
Assistant Editor, North American Content
Farms.com

When a Douglas County, Illinois farmer needed help, his friends and neighbors were there to lend helping hands and machinery.

In August, a pry bar hit Dave Young in the face while he worked on a semi-truck. The injuries left the 59-year-old farmer blind in his right eye.

He feared his 230 acres wouldn’t get harvested.

“It feels sort of like letting people down because I’ve done this all my life basically and I have landlords and people that depend on me to harvest their crop,” Young told WCIA 3.

That’s when a group of about 20 farmers, equipped with combines, semis and helpful attitudes decided to help.

“People just said absolutely. We will be there. How can we help and what do we need to bring?” Tyler Harvey, Douglas County Farm Bureau manager, told WCIA 3.

Harvest Heritage: Farmers put own harvest on hold to help their own

The harvest, which some said can take up to three weeks to complete, was finished in one day.

“It just kind of shows how the agricultural community, when an accident unfortunately does happen, we do come together to help one of our own,” Harvey said.

Young said he’s going to use his situation to spread a message of safety.

“All the time we think about wearing safety equipment using power tools, but hand tools can hurt just as bad,” he told the Associated Press.

"One little slip and I'm paying for it."

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.