NEAR DUSK ON OCTOBER 4, 1993, Jere Wingert began running a combine through his corn crop, working down the fields of his Franklin County farm. The combine funneled six rows of planted corn into an auger, a piece of equipment resembling a 16-foot rotating corkscrew. When the auger clogged with a few too many corn stalks, Wingert stepped down from the cab of the machine leaving it running, as he had done countless times before in his 15 years of farming. He stood on a platform above the auger, cleared the obstruction, and began to step back to his cab.

Hard at work on his family's Franklin County beef farm, Jere Wingert gets hands-on help from his son, Nicholas, as Nicholas' younger brother Samuel looks on.

During fall corn harvest, a fine dust settles like a silk throw over many surfaces on tractors and machinery. As Jere Wingert stepped back to the cab, the soles of his work boots slipped on the dusty platform above the auger. As he fell, Wingert could feel his left leg wrap twice around the whirling auger, breaking bones and stretching muscles. He couldn't feel his right leg, so he assumed it had been severed. Wingert managed to catch himself as he fell, keeping his upper body out of the machine. The combine was equipped with a clutch that stopped the auger when it encountered obstructions, so the twisting motion of the auger ceased as Wingert began screaming for help. "My son Nicholas, who was four then, told my wife, Carol, he thought he heard cats fighting," recalls Wingert, who is now working toward a degree in agricultural systems management at Penn State. "Carol saw the combine had stopped and came out. I told her how to turn the combine off, and then told her to call 911 and my father."

Accidents like Jere Wingert's happen every day on farms across the nation. The National Safety Council in 1997 rated agriculture as the second most hazardous industry in the United States, citing a work death rate five times higher than the all-industry average. In 1994, the council recorded 710 deaths nationwide from unintentional injuries on farms, 342 of which were related to machinery accidents. In Pennsylvania, there were 293 farm deaths from 1990 to 1996. Tractors and other machinery accounted for more than 70 percent of the fatal injuries during that period.

Farm fatalities affect more older and younger victims than most occupational hazards. In 1996, 23 percent of farm-related fatalities involved children age 14 or younger, while 25 percent involved persons age 65 or older. "On a farm, work and recreation areas overlap," says agricultural safety and health specialist Dennis Murphy. "Young children are often exposed to machinery or are even operating tractors, and senior citizens are routinely exposed to hazards long after most of their peers have retired to a life of golf and cruises."

Agriculture is the state's largest industry, generating about $35 billion annually. The backbone of this industry is the state's 50,000 farms, of which more than 80 percent are family-owned. "Labor is often supplied by children, a spouse, and perhaps older or temporary workers," says Murphy. "Farms are usually small operations that fall beneath the regulations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Also, farmers can't pass on costs for improving safety to the consumer because they don't control the market for their goods. Insurance companies often do not inspect work sites, workers are not unionized, and the work is done in a variety of conditions, ranging from extreme heat to extreme cold, in rain, sleet, snow, or mud."

In most industries, an injury slows production for a short time. In farming, the economic losses sustained when individual farmers suffer an injury are huge. The National Safety Council estimates the cost of any fatal work injury at $790,000. The costs associated with a disabling work injury are $26,000 per injury. According to Murphy, the cost estimates for farm deaths and injuries in a single year, 1996, resulted in losses of $142.3 million. "The aftermath of an accident can leave relatives devastated both emotionally and financially," Murphy says. A survey taken in New York found that most families no longer operated their farm within five years of a fatal farm accident.

The Wingert family, (from left) Jere, Nicholas, Carol, and Samuel, played a role in helping Jere during his accident. Nicholas heard his father calling for help, and Carol, then pregnant with Samuel, quickly called in emergency aid personnel.

During his accident, Jere Wingert wasn't thinking about emotions or finances. He was wondering how he was going to get out of the auger. The community's emergency medical team responded to the scene within 20 minutes of the initial call and tried to cut Wingert out of the metal auger using the Jaws of Life. That tool, designed to cut through automotive sheet metal, couldn't even dent the heavy steel auger. "My father got the idea to get a cutting torch and cut through the ends of the auger," Wingert says. "A neighbor did the cutting while the emergency medical technicians gave me an IV and a tourniquet for my leg to prepare me for a helicopter flight. They got me out of the machine, but none of them really knew anything about farm equipment."

Preparing emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and rescue personnel to handle farm emergencies has been a priority at Penn State since the mid-1970s, when Murphy and other safety specialists developed materials to teach EMTs about silo fires, grain bin emergencies, chemical emergencies, tractor overturns, and machinery accidents. Most of Murphy's instructional modules have been adapted by FARMEDIC National Training Center, a program for emergency personnel based at Alfred State College in Alfred, New York. "In the '70s, emergency workers were receiving standardized training for car crashes, heart attacks, and other trauma, but there were no standard procedures for ag accidents," says Dave Hill, executive director of FARMEDIC. "Penn State developed very good materials for agricultural trauma." Each year, FARMEDIC trains between 2,500 to 3,000 mostly volunteer emergency service providers in 33 states. The basic 20-hour course, based on Penn State materials, offers a mix of classroom instruction and about 10 hours of hands-on simulations.

Another collaborative program, First-On-The-Scene for Farm Families, trains family members to remain calm and make important decisions during an emergency. "Most farms are quite far away from a fire department or hospital," Murphy explains. "The decisions made by a family member after a farm accident can mean the difference between life and death."

First-On-The-Scene programs are offered through Penn State Cooperative Extension offices and to clients served by FARMEDIC. "Rescue workers are asking for this training so they can in turn train families and groups as a community service," Hill says.

FARMEDIC also is collaborating with the Pennsylvania Agromedicine Program, a cooperative program of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture and Penn State's College of Medicine, to create a training module for agricultural chemical emergencies. The program, based at The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, was established in 1994 to promote the health and safety of farm families, agricultural workers, and consumers of agricultural products. In the last three years, the program has created modules to train doctors about agriculture-related trauma, noise-induced hearing loss, skin cancer, farm stress, insect- transmitted disease, and chemical poisoning.

Despite such advances in agriculture-related medical programs, the best efforts of medicine were not enough to save Jere Wingert's leg, even though surgeons at Baltimore Shock Trauma Unit worked for 12 hours on the limb. Coming out of surgery, Wingert knew it would be a struggle not only to regain his career, but to regain the life he had previously known. He spent months at rehabilitation hospitals and eventually learned to walk with a prosthetic leg. "I still think I can do farming work," Wingert says with a smile. "The physical challenges would be hard to overcome, but there are always ways to get around problems."

Helping farmers or farm family members overcome obstacles posed by physical and mental disabilities is the focus of AgrAbility for Pennsylvanians, a program coordinated by The Easter Seal Society of Central Pennsylvania and Penn State Cooperative Extension. According to former senior project associate Doug Schaufler, project personnel make 30 to 40 site visits across the state each year to recommend how to adapt the home or farm for a person affected by a permanent disability. AgrAbility also offers information referrals, training for rehabilitation professionals, and peer counseling.

The program works closely with Pennsylvania's Office of Vocational Rehabilitation (OVR), an agency with 16 district offices throughout the Commonwealth. The agency reviews recommendations made by AgrAbility and determines what changes are needed and, based on an application and household income, how the changes would be paid for. "About half the clients AgrAbility works with do not have farm-related injuries," Schaufler points out. "We also work with individuals injured in auto accidents or those disabled by illness."

Wingert hasn't decided what he'll do when he graduates a year from now. He hasn't ruled out trying to farm, but it's more likely he will try to start over by working for an agribusiness. He has remained active in several groups within his community and occasionally speaks to groups and classes on farm safety. "Our family and our neighborhood have grown closer since my accident," Wingert says. "I try not to think about it too much, because you can't change the past. If I can help other people through training or by sharing my own experience, I'm happy to do that."

Safety specialist Dennis Murphy has done extensive training and research on tractor rollover. Here he uses a crash-test dummy to gauge stability levels for a tractor going downhill.

Murphy's two decades of experience in agricultural safety have shown him that the best way to promote safety is to reach children and teenagers before they've learned the bad habits of their elders. Penn State's agricultural safety education program centers on publications and training modules developed by Murphy and Penn State safety project assistants. Extension agents also use Murphy's programs within their county or develop specialized safety programs of their own.

Potter County agent Amy Benson and McKean County agent Tim Pierson developed a program to train teenagers to perform farm inspections. The program, which received an Award of Commendation from the National Safety Council in 1997, organizes 4-H leaders and groups of teenagers into farm safety teams. During a workshop in March 1997, each team received classroom instruction on topics such as tractors, machinery, chemical storage, animal handling, and electrical wiring. The teams then traveled to a nearby farm and worked at several hands-on instruction stations. "Once the teams completed training, they developed a safety checklist to help farm families recognize, identify, and correct safety hazards on farms," Benson explains. "We visited more than 40 farmers to help them evaluate how safe their farms were."

To determine how farmers react to different safety education methods, Murphy currently is evaluating data from programs in five counties. In Juniata County, a community coalition prioritized and initiated educational safety programs. In Huntingdon County, youth-targeted programs were used. In Somerset County, farmers were asked to self-audit their farms for safety hazards. Bedford and Centre Counties, used as controls, received no special safety education programs. "There has never been any evaluation of safety programming," Murphy explains. "If we find that a specific approach to safety education is more effective at changing the behavior of farmers or reducing farm hazards, it will make our job a lot easier."

Many county safety programs are made possible by grants provided through Pennsylvania's Farm Safety and Occupational Health Act, enacted in 1994. In 1997, Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Samuel E. Hayes Jr., chairman of the farm safety and occupational health advisory board, awarded 20 organizations grants of up to $2,500 for a variety of programs. "Any statewide farm organization, volunteer fire company, or ambulance or rescue squad is eligible for the grants," says John Tacelosky, chief of the health and safety division of the Department of Agriculture. "Cooperative extension often can act as a catalyst to help communities or counties start farm and rural safety programs."

Some grants are used to hold 4-H Safety Day Camps each year. The camps, which date back to the 1970s, are an effective and popular way to educate children on the hazards of farm life, Murphy says. Children receive classroom instruction on farm safety, and then the class is split into small groups. Each group then rotates through a series of hands-on educational stations, where they get experience dealing with different hazards. "Most of the children are between the ages of 8 and 13," says Lancaster County extension agent Bob Anderson, who has supervised a safety camp in his county every year since 1994. "Lancaster County has a significant number of Amish and Mennonite farms, and this community has been a big target audience for our safety programs. These farmers often have older equipment, and their children start working on the farm much earlier than other kids."

Performing a farm safety audit, safety specialist Malcolm "Mac" Legault inspects the tread on a piece of heavy equipment.

Juniata County has used the farm safety grant program to create a unique cost-share project to retrofit tractors with rollover protection systems, or ROPS. These massive steel tubes form a bar or cage over an operator's head to protect against rollover injury. According to Walt Whitmer, an extension agent based in Juniata County, local farmers are given $400 toward the purchase of a ROPS, which is then installed free of charge at a local tractor dealership. "Farmers know how important ROPS are for safety, but $1,000 is a big investment for something that doesn't affect profits," Whitmer explains. "By offering $400 toward the purchase, many farmers are coming to us saying, 'I've been meaning to do this, but I couldn't afford it. Now I can.'" The program was created by a community coalition with agricultural interests. "One of the first things we did as a group was prioritize the most pressing farm safety issues in our county," Whitmer says. "Tractor rollover was right at the top of our list." The coalition outfitted four tractors with new ROPS in 1997. This year, the coalition plans to use another grant and money raised by the group to retrofit four more tractors with ROPS and 15 other tractors with protective shields for rotating steel shafts that power add- on equipment.

Most farmers are concerned about safety, but safety purchases are often shunted aside in favor of financial decisions that directly affect the farm's profit-and-loss statement. "Bluntly put, farmers are not going to invest in safety measures until it pays to do so," Murphy says. "The economic incentives for farmers must come from the insurance industry." Murphy, Tacelosky, and representatives of the insurance industry organized the Insurance Work Group, headed by Art Glatfelter, president of Glatfelter Insurance Co., to establish a series of priorities for increasing safety measures on the state's farms.

"In an industry like farming, where the work site also is the recreation site and the home site, insurance agents must have criteria for judging how safe a farm is," Tacelosky says. "We have to come up with a ratings system that can be analyzed by the insurance industry in order to provide incentives for safety measures in the form of a premium discount."

Penn State has contributed a critical component in the effort to set a measurable farm safety standard for insurance agents by developing Agricultural Safety and Health Best Management Practices. The manual, the result of a two-year project headed by safety specialist Malcolm "Mac" Legault, will help farmers and insurance representatives identify and assess the risk associated with farm hazards. "In the past, safety standards were just a collection of fact sheets, usually not written by the same author," Legault says. "We made sure this publication was a complete package." The 145-page manual concisely explains almost any possible farm hazard, complemented by illustrations or photographs. Legault and Murphy also designed the publication to allow farmers to self-audit their farms using an easily understood checklist.

Legault looks over a safety audit checklist in Agricultural Safety and Health Best Management Practices, a publication he coauthored, as he checks wiring, structural integrity, and other safety features in a Lancaster County dairy barn.

Legault currently supervises a research project to test the effectiveness of the safety publication. Over the next 12 months, researchers will visit 150 Pennsylvania farms to perform safety audits at each site. The participants are divided into four groups. The first group receives a copy of the audit and a safety manual. The second group receives a manual, but no audit. The third group receives the audit only. The fourth group, the control, receives only previously published safety fact sheets. "We hope our findings show that using the manual in combination with an audit gives farmers the incentive to make changes," Legault says.

Agricultural injuries also can be reduced by making equipment safer. Tractors at the end of the 20th century come equipped with seatbelts, protective cages, and other safety features. Still, in 1995, about 450 fatalities nationwide were traced directly to tractor use. A significant number of these incidents involve power take-off (PTO) shaft entanglements. "A PTO shaft transfers engine horsepower to a piece of attached farm equipment by connecting a rotating shaft from the tractor to a universal joint on equipment such as a generator or manure spreader," Murphy explains. "PTO accidents usually occur when clothes or hair are snagged by the rotating shaft and the victim is violently jerked into or around the spinning shaft. The majority of PTO injuries occur in the colder months, from October to February, because farmers are wearing heavy jackets, overalls, long underwear, or gloves all types of clothing that will not tear or rip easily."

Agricultural engineer Dennis Buckmaster and graduate student Rod Thomas hope to eliminate many of these traumatic injuries by replacing the PTO shaft with hydraulic power. The spinning shaft would be eliminated in favor of two large hydraulic hoses that can transfer power using fluid at pressures up to 5,000 pounds per square inch. Hydraulics had not been used for large power transfer in mobile equipment previously because past fluid power technology was relatively inefficient, but today's hydraulic components are more efficient. Buckmaster and Thomas believe a computer-controlled hydraulic system can efficiently run attachments and perhaps decrease fuel consumption.

Thomas, a former systems engineer at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, has proposed to replace both the PTO system and the mechanical-drive transmission in tractors with fluid-drive systems controlled by a computer. This would allow the tractor to provide independent operating speeds for the wheels and implements, increasing mechanical and fuel efficiency. Thomas will use a computer to gauge exactly how much power is required to drive the tractor's wheels as well as any attachments, much like a car's computer senses how to run the turbocharger, anti-lock brakes, and air conditioner simultaneously. The computer then will set the engine controls to ensure the engine runs at full efficiency. "When operating a PTO shaft, most farmers start the engine at full power and keep it there," Thomas says. "This is because PTO shafts spin at one of two recommended speeds to operate implements properly 540 or 1,000 revolutions per minute. These power requirements mean the tractor's engine must be run at full power. With hydraulics, the engine can start at an idle and, as the load increases, we can increase the engine's power output. Proper implement speed can be maintained by varying pump displacement as the engine speed changes."

Hydraulic power would increase farm safety by replacing high-speed spinning metal parts with high-pressure hoses and precision-fit metal couplings. In addition, fluid power offers greater flexibility in tractor design. "Without the mechanical driveline, field equipment can have a much tighter turning radius," Thomas says. "Computer-controlled safety features such as quickly stopping or reversing the wheel drive, reversing equipment to extricate an injured person, or rapid shut-down to avoid a rollover can be designed into the tractor."

While a fluid-power PTO could reduce many farm injuries, it's not risk-free. Hydraulic hoses may leak, which can contaminate soils and water with oil. Tiny leaks in hoses can cause "high-pressure injection injury," squirting oil into flesh, which can cause infections and other serious complications.

Agricultural engineering graduate student Rod Thomas installs a fluid-drive system on a standard John Deere tractor to test the efficiency of using hydraulic power to operate add-on equipment. Currently, tractors use a swiftly rotating power takeoff shaft to operate implements. Many injuries occur when limbs or clothing are jerked into the spinning shaft.

Thomas and Buckmaster are outfitting a John Deere 4040 tractor to test the efficiency of using hydraulics to transfer and distribute all engine power. The tractor has a standard mechanical drive line and PTO system. On the same tractor, Thomas has installed a separate fluid-drive system that disengages the mechanical drive. In a series of tests at Penn State's experimental farms at Rock Springs in the spring of 1999, Thomas will test the efficiency of both systems to establish a baseline of information on engine and equipment efficiency as the tractor operates a plow, a silage blower, a manure spreader, and a large round baler. "As precision agriculture becomes more accepted, more and more tractors and equipment will have a computer in the cab," Thomas says. "Why not use that computer to operate a safer, more efficient machine as well?"

Another Penn State research project uses state-of-the-art technology to address tractor rollovers. When tractors are driven up, down, or across a slope, the vehicle's center of gravity becomes much more unstable. If the tractor has equipment such as a front-end loader or baling fork attached, the additional weight can further destabilize the vehicle. Rear overturns often occur when tractors attempt to pull a very heavy load set low to the ground, such as a tree stump. If the chain used to pull the stump from the ground is not hitched properly, the front wheels will lift off the ground, flipping the tractor over backward.

Mechanical engineer Joe Sommer and Murphy have been working since the mid-1980s to design a gauge that can give operators advance warning that their vehicle's center of gravity is destabilizing. Sommer, a professor in the College of Engineering, studies the kinematics and dynamics of machinery, or the mathematics of how things move. "We decided we needed an indicator like a tachometer," Sommer says. "A tachometer has a yellow line that warns when engine rpms are too high, and a red line that means the rpms might damage the engine. For overturns we would like the yellow line to mean 'Be very careful operating this tractor,' while the red line would mean, 'You're lucky you're not dead.'"

Sommer and agricultural and biological engineering graduate student Sridhar Loke are using accelerometers, the same devices used to deploy automobile airbags, to sense the deceleration in speed and the change in angle that occurs when a tractor overturn is imminent. A prototype that could be installed on a dashboard or within a tractor's control panel has been thoroughly tested and is highly accurate in predicting rollovers. Unfortunately, the device, which used six accelerometers to monitor stability, costs $600 to produce, which means a tractor manufacturer would charge about $1,000 to offer the device. "On a $15,000 tractor, not many farmers will pay $1,000 for a secondary system," Sommer says.

Fortunately, the extensive use of automotive airbags has lowered the price of accelerometers while improving quality. Sommer is now working on a smaller prototype that uses two accelerometers. He estimates this system could be installed for about $100. The device, which fits on the transmission box of any tractor, will be tested this fall using a tractor designed by Murphy for rollover testing.

To date, the efforts of Penn State's farm safety education programs and other collaborative efforts have paid significant dividends. In 1976, Pennsylvania injury statistics noted one non-fatal work injury for every 6.6 farms. According to the most recent injury surveys conducted from 1993 to 1995, the rate of injuries has dropped to one injury for every 12.7 farms. While Murphy is cheered by these positive results, he knows the path to safer farms will still be traveled long after he has retired. "Education about agricultural safety is certainly never-ending," Murphy says with a smile. "There are a lot more people devoting more time and effort to ag safety than when I started, but there is a long way to go. Older farmers are still working around equipment when they shouldn't be. Children are still being needlessly injured while riding as passengers on tractors. It took 40 years for auto manufacturers to put seatbelts in cars and many consumers still don't wear them. Promoting agricultural safety will always be a slow and steady process of education and engineering, but I think Penn State has made a big contribution to that process."

— John Wall
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Faculty and staff referenced in this article are Bob Anderson, extension agent in Lancaster County; Amy Benson, extension agent in Potter County; Dennis Buckmaster, associate professor of agricultural engineering; Malcolm Legault, extension project associate in safety; Dennis Murphy, professor of agricultural engineering; Douglas Schaufler, former senior project associate in agricultural and extension education; and Walter Whitmer, extension agent in Juniata County. Research discussed in this article is funded by the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture, the United States Department of Agriculture, the College of Agricultural Sciences, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the Northeast Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, and Allegheny University of the Health Sciences. Joe Sommer is a professor of mechanical engineering in the College of Engineering.