The Delaware Farm Bureau’s annual Ag Safety Conference is fast approaching.
The 4th Annual Ag Safety Conference is Wednesday, March 18th at the Harrington Volunteer Fire Company.
“It’s actually a spin-off of our Rural Roads Safety Initiative, that we had started in 2016,” said June Unruh, chair of DFB’s promotion and education ag safety subcommittee and chair of the Ag Safety Conference.
Sheexplains that the Rural Roads Safety Initiative seeks to address First State farmers’ concerns about safety on roads with their equipment.
It’s a personal issue for Unruh, who says a friend was killed a few years ago when he pulled his tractor out on the road and was hit by a motorcyclist.
"There’s so many people around; some farmers are selling their property and developments are coming and there’s more people out on these roads and they just don’t understand farm equipment, you know, how slow it is and traveling on the roads," said Unruh. "So they just need to have an awareness about it.”
Unruh says topics to be covered at this year’s conference include farm equipment fires, herbicide safety and grain bin safety
She says stress and farming is also on the agenda, noting farmers can face a tremendous amount of stress,
“There’s trying to get your crop in the ground, trying to get it off at harvest; the weather; farming is a weather-related-driven occupation. So the weather plays a big part of the stress," said Unruh. "I mean prices - you know - is the price good - trying to get a contract for that price; equipment breakdowns and trying to get it repaired so you can get back out in the field again.”
Conference registration is available at the Delaware Farm Bureau website website. The deadline to register is this Friday, March 6, 2020.
