Equipment safety tips for planting season

Mar 26, 2021

Slow down and use good lightning, farmers say

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

With the 2021 spring planting season approaching, there will likely be an increase in the volume of farm equipment traveling on roads.

With that at top of mind, Farms.com connected with farmers and asked them to share tips for other farmers to help ensure their safety and the safety of other motorists during the planting season.

Marty Danzer, a cash crop producer from Carroll, Iowa, reminds his fellow farmers to be patient while operating their tractors.

“We farmers tend to get in a hurry during planting season because it never seems like there’s enough hours in the day,” he told Farms.com. “But sometimes you just have to slow down and be really aware of what’s going on around you.”

Another tip from Danzer is to drive on the shoulder of the road if possible.

Infrastructure projects are starting to consider the size of modern farm equipment, he said.

“If it’s safe to do so, I’ll take the shoulder of a road rather than stay on the pavement,” he said. “Some of the newer roads in our areas are being built with farm equipment in mind, but obviously that’s not always the case in some places.”

Leo Guilbeault, a cash crop farmer from Belle River, Ont., also shared some equipment safety tips with his fellow growers.

Guilbeault rides a Harley Davidson motorcycle for recreation and takes his motorcycle safety mindset into the cab of the tractor.

“I drive my equipment the same way as if I was driving my motorcycle,” he told Farms.com. “I’m always cautious of other people around me and I’m always looking beside and behind me, especially as I approach an intersection.”

Guilbeault also encourages farmers to make investments into equipment safety.

He recently upgraded parts of his equipment which have worked well.

“We’ve updated all of our lighting systems to LED and those have been great compared to the old bulb-style lights,” he said. “And we made sure that we have new slow-moving vehicle signs. If you’re transporting farm equipment at night, then you want to do all that you can to make yourself as visible as possible.”

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators