News Update
September 21, 2011
Get Ready for Fall Harvest with Renewed Focus on Tractor Safety
Get ready: the fall harvest season is nearly upon us. The so-called “lazy” days of summer will undoubtedly give way to a very busy harvest for farmers across the county, increasing the likelihood for fatigue and risk of injury for tractor operators logging extra hours in the fields. That is why Kubota Tractor Corp., in observance of the National Education Center for Agriculture Safety’s “National Farm Safety and Health Week,” September 18-24, is reminding all tractor and equipment users to brush up on ten critical safety reminders — Kubota’s Ten Commandments to Tractor Safety — before harvest season officially gets under way.
“At Kubota, we advocate for safe operating practices year-round, but especially during peak seasons like harvest,” says Greg Embury, vice president of sales and marketing. “As the end of summer moves to fall, it is a good time to remind everyone who operates tractors and heavy equipment — farmers, ranchers and their families — about tractor safety to help prevent serious injury or fatality due to an unfortunate accident.”
Safety Starts with Use of a Rollover Protective Structure (ROPS)
According to the National Safety Council, if all tractors were equipped with a ROPS and a safety belt, about 350 lives would be saved each year. Make sure your tractor — old and new — has a fully operational ROPS. Along with a fastened seatbelt, ROPS provides a protective zone around the operator, which proves to be highly effective in preventing serious injury and death due to tractor rollovers.
Here are Kubota’s “Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety” and important reminders for tractor operators for a year-round commitment to safe operating practices:
- 1. Know your tractor, its implements and how they work. Please read and understand the Operator’s Manual(s) before operating the equipment. Also, keep your equipment in good condition.
- 2. Use ROPS and a seatbelt whenever and wherever applicable. If your tractor has a foldable ROPS, fold it down only when absolutely necessary and fold it up and lock it again as soon as possible. Do not wear the seatbelt when the ROPS is folded.* Most tractor fatalities are caused by overturns. (*Kubota Tractor Corp. strongly recommends the use of ROPS and seatbelts in almost all applications.)
- 3. Be familiar with your terrain and work area — walk the area first to be sure and drive safely. Use special caution on slopes, slow down for all turns and stay off the highway whenever possible.
- 4. Never start an engine in a closed shed or garage. Exhaust gas contains carbon monoxide, which is colorless, odorless — and deadly.
- 5. Always keep your PTO properly shielded. Make it a habit to walk around your tractor and PTO driven implement — never walk over, through or between the tractor and implement, particularly if either is running. The PTO rotates with enough speed and strength to kill you.
- 6. Keep your hitches low and always on the drawbar. Otherwise, your tractor might flip over backwards.
- 7. Never get off a moving tractor or leave it with its engine running. Shut it down before leaving the seat.
- 8. Never refuel while the engine is running or hot. Additionally, do not add coolant to the radiator while the engine is hot; hot coolant can erupt and scald.
- 9. Keep all children off and away from your tractor and its implements at all times. Children are generally attracted to tractors and the work they do. However, a tractor's work is not child’s play. Remember, a child’s disappointment is fleeting, while your memory of his or her injury or death resulting from riding the tractor with you, or being too close, will last a lifetime.
- 10. Never be in a hurry or take chances about anything you do with your tractor. Think safety first, then take your time and do it right.
A Commitment to Safety
Additional safety information, including Kubota’s “Ten Commandments of Tractor Safety” brochure, Kubota’s “Hazard Hunt” game, and a tractor safety coloring book, can be found at www.kubota.com. Owners of older model Kubota tractors can also utilize a ROPS and Seatbelt Installation function on the Kubota.com safety pages that allows owners to submit their tractor’s model and serial number for eligible models to obtain retrofit pricing from their local Kubota dealer. Contact your local dealer for more information on ROPS retrofits for older tractor models. Major tractor manufacturers have special programs where a ROPS can be obtained for most tractors manufactured since 1970. To date, Kubota dealers throughout the country have installed more than 10,000 retrofits.
A long-time supporter of safety initiatives, Kubota is also a proud sponsor of the Progressive Agriculture Safety Day™ educational program — an effort designed to make safety education and training available for children year-round. Now in its 17th year, the program will conclude more than 410 Safety Day events in 2011 across the U.S. and Canada. For more information, visit www.ProgressiveAg.org.
NSAC Releases Letter to the Super Committee and Farm Bill Budget Views; Comments on Obama Farm Budget Proposals
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) urged the congressional deficit reduction or super committee Tuesday to take a policy and reform-oriented approach to reducing total farm bill spending while renewing investments in underfunded areas including new farmers, rural development, conservation, renewable energy, agricultural research, and new market development.
The NSAC letter to the Committee urged them to resist further cuts to farm conservation beyond the $2 billion Congress has already cut since the 2008 Farm Bill, to place hard caps on farm commodity and crop and revenue insurance subsidies, to end subsidies for the conversion of prime grasslands, to renew funding for critical mandatory farm bill programs that have no secured baselines after the end of the current farm bill cycle in 2012, and to protect anti-hunger programs from cuts.
A more detailed nine page document accompanies the letter and includes the full scope of the NSAC farm bill budget proposal.
NSAC Policy Director Ferd Hoefner contrasted the NSAC view with the farm bill cuts proposed by President Obama yesterday:
“The Obama proposal holds promise, especially in the call for the end of direct payments. The farm bill cuts the President offered, however, are disproportionate to the size of the farm bill budget relative to total federal mandatory spending. In addition to the unfair size of the cut, the Administration proposal has three other problems.
First, the Administration would cut direct payments without offering a new alternative safety net proposal, even while proposing to leave a largely failed disaster program in place at a very substantial total cost equaling roughly half of the total savings. Disaster assistance should be built into the new safety net at a significantly lower cost, and eliminated as a free-standing program.
Second, all of the subsidies they do propose to leave in place are available without any effective limit on the size of the subsidy any one farm can receive. As such, they would focus the cuts on small and mid-sized farms, while allowing the largest farms continued access to the loopholes currently written into law to largely avoid the cuts that apply to everyone else.
Third, they do not take account of the dire need to put money into farm, food, and rural programs that create jobs, new business opportunities, and new healthy food options but that have shrinking or soon to be non-existent budgets.
The NSAC proposals by contrast would keep farm bill cuts at more equitable levels, target cuts so that the largest and wealthiest farms would actually have to contribute to deficit reduction, and align spending policies with widely supported public values with respect to increasing farm and rural economic opportunity, conserving natural resources and protecting the environment, and improving access to healthy food.”
NSAC members from around the country will be contacting the Joint Select Committee and the House and Senate Agricultural Committees over the coming weeks to push for smarter budget cuts and real reform.
The NSAC is a grassroots alliance that advocates for federal policy reform supporting the long-term social, economic, and environmental sustainability of agriculture, natural resources, and rural communities.
EPA Never Said Hay is a Pollutant
A Kansas feedlot operator is trying to make hay by falsely claiming that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defined hay as a water pollutant.
The owner of the Callicrate Feeding Co. has been spinning a “hay-as-pollutant” myth through the blogosphere for a couple of weeks now. While the company is certainly entitled to its own opinions about EPA, the company is not entitled to its own set of facts.
Here are the facts. On Aug. 15, EPA’s Region 7, which includes Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and nine tribal nations, took action to correct several serious environmental violations at the Callicrate Feeding Co. in Saint Francis, Kan. EPA found water permit violations at Callicrate’s operation that needed to be addressed. The compliance order was not based on hay. Nor would EPA have issued such an action based on hay.
To be clear: The order had nothing to do with hay. At no place in the 11-page order is the word “hay” mentioned. Nor is there mention of alfalfa or grass.
EPA cited the Callicrate operation for failure to control harmful runoff, maintain adequate manure storage capacity, keep adequate operation records, and meet the state and federal requirements of its nutrient management plan.
EPA inspectors observed silage, and dried distillers’ grains within the uncontrolled feedstock storage area.
When stored inappropriately, the silage and grains can turn into a liquid material that contains contaminants detrimental to water quality. EPA inspectors also observed slaughter wastes being stored outside in an uncontrolled area. The EPA order was based on those contaminants and the other violations mentioned above.
The Callicrate facility is permitted by the State of Kansas for a capacity of 12,000 head of beef cattle and had 3,200 head at the time of the inspection. Under EPA definitions, 1,000 head of beef is considered a large Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO). This is not a small operation. The permitted capacity puts the company in the top 5% of the largest animal feeding operations in Region 7.
This action by EPA was issued to correct problems. Less than two weeks after the order was issued, Callicrate’s attorney informed us that the company had already taken action to address the problems identified in EPA’s order.
We have some indication of how other producers have perceived this fracas in a feedlot. Region 7’s offer to meet with Kansas cattle producers to discuss CAFO enforcement was warmly received and we will be meeting within days. Drovers/Cattle Network published an article debunking the “hay-as-pollutant” myth.
As that article concludes: “But as the industry confronts and negotiates these genuine regulatory issues, R-CALF’s claim that ‘EPA declares hay a pollutant to antagonize small and mid-sized U.S. cattle feeders’ is unnecessary, inflammatory hyperbole.”
Cattlemen’s Beef Board Hires Polly Ruhland as CEO
Polly Ruhland is the new CEO of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, as hired Tuesday, Sept. 20, by the Beef Board Executive Committee.
Ruhland has been serving as the interim CEO since June 28, and the chairman of the Executive Committee in charge of hiring her said she more than proved herself in her three months in that position.
“Polly was the right choice for this checkoff, and for this industry,” said Weldon Wynn, Executive Committee chairman and Beef Board vice chairman. “She has a powerful passion for the checkoff and for the beef industry, and she has absolutely proven in the last three months that she can run this operation astutely. She has an excellent rapport with staff and our contractors, and I don’t think we could have found anyone at this time who could have done the job as well as she is doing it.
“I think producers across America will certainly be satisfied with the results Polly achieves,” Wynn continued. “And I feel honored to have been serving as the chairman of the committee that hired her.”
Beef Board Chairman Wesley Grau echoed Wynn’s sentiments.
“Polly brings a breath of fresh air to the CBB,” Grau said. “More importantly, her knowledge of the checkoff and our contractors allows us to move forward with much needed improvements to the checkoff.
“Her demeanor is beyond reproach,” he continued. “Her knowledge is beyond reproach. And her willingness and ability to get things done is second to none. As chairman of the Beef Board, I am very pleased that Polly has accepted this position.”
Polly joined the Beef Board team as director of evaluation in early 2010. Her previous 20-plus years in the beef industry most recently included six years with the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), working in the areas of issues management, membership and communications. Prior to NCBA, she served as communication director for the North American Limousin Foundation (NALF), was compliance coordinator for the institutional animal care and use committee at Colorado State University, and was director of communications for the American Gelbvieh Association.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Colorado and a master’s degree in agriculture, with an emphasis in beef industry leadership, from Colorado State University. Polly has one son, Ryan, and lives in Denver with her husband, Randy.
“The opportunity to serve farmers and ranchers in this way is an unparalleled honor,” Ruhland said. “I am committed to working every hour of every day to promote beef through the unique cooperation and coordination offered by the Beef Checkoff Program.”
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