Tractor safety course available for youth

Apr 01, 2021

The students will receive virtual and hands-on training

By Diego Flammini
Staff Writer
Farms.com

A university is offering a tractor safety course to teenagers interested in working on farms.

The University of Maine (UMaine) Cooperative Extension’s course for 14- and 15-year-olds starts April 14 and runs through May 5. Applications are due April 4.

The course will focus on multiple topics, said Jason Lilley, sustainable agriculture professional with UMaine extension.

“We start out with understanding some of the risk and the level of risk with different activities on the farm in general,” he told Farms.com. “We talk about equipment safety, the risks of different sizes of equipment, implementing different types of practices around the farm and how age can play into that.”

Age can play a factor when it comes to equipment safety.

Teenagers, especially boys, have a feeling of invincibility which can lead to injury, Lilley said.

“There’s a level of experience that’s important when operating complex equipment in order to maintain safety,” he said. “We get a level of bravado that comes with teenage boys that nothing bad can happen to them and their reaction time will be fast enough to prevent accidents from happening. We try to teach them how fast accidents can happen and to be prepared.”

The course is also beneficial to youth wanting to work on a farm not owned by a member of their family.

Under state law, any youth wanting to operate equipment on a non-family farm must successfully complete the course, which is recognized by the department of labor.

“This curriculum has been put together by the National Safe Tractor and Machinery Operation Program,” Lilley said.

The safety course starts April 14. Virtual learning will take place from 6pm to 7pm.

In-person tractor practice is set for May 1 and May 8, with a May 15 rain date. These sessions will take place at Gorham Public Works in Gorham, Me., and Kennebec Valley Community College in Hinckley, Me.

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