12/6/07 Kids & Farm Safety

Kids & Farm Safety. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. When I was about to get my first summer farm job many, many years ago, I was required to take a class on farm safety. Most of it dealt with tractor safety. That message is even more important today according to Dave Schweitz, Executive Director with Farm Safety 4 Just Kids. They have recently updated their information. SCHWEITZ: We've been in the tractor safety business for 20 years now but our educational packet was about 6 years old and it needed updating and some things changed so Deere came along and sponsored that revision and it should be out to our chapters sometime in January. Also, Cargill is sponsoring updating our grain safety packet. So were pretty excited about both of those. Farm safety is extremely important for everyone but Schweitz wants the kids to be aware. SCHWEITZ: You just need to know that there are dangers there and you got to keep that in the back of your mind and you've got to move a little slower. These things happen so quickly, everybody thinks everything is fine and dandy and all of a sudden someone is wrapped around a PTO shaft or someone got backed over by a grain wagon so it's just keeping some common sense. The numbers are sobering. SCHWEITZ: There's still a hundred kids that get killed on farms every year and it's probably in the mid to high 30-thousand that get seriously injured on farms every year. We've been around 20 years now and we're in 34 states, we've still got a lot of work to do to get all these injuries way down. Farm Safety 4 Just Kids presents educational classes in their various state chapters to let the kids know about all the issues and areas where injuries happen on the farm. SCHWEITZ: A lot of times kids will go through our program and go home and say  dad, I can't ride with you or  dad, I can't be on the ATV with you and that's really when we're getting the message across, but they put on the safety programs. They work with the schools, FFA, 4H people that put on our safety programs. We develop them. We support the chapter network but they're the ones who are actually responsible for putting on a program. I think last year I think they put on somewhere between 900 and 950 programs in front of about a million and half kids. If you'd like more information on Farm Safety 4 Just kids visit their website at fs4jk.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.fs4jk.org