By Greg Lamp SMART BE SAFE Taking shortcuts to outrun a faster work world often leads to injuries, even fatalities. W ith harvest knocking at the door, harried and often sleep-deprived farmers bring in the bounty. Doing it safely is the challenge. Whether manning the combine or handling grain at the co-op, staying safe is an unending exercise that is often neglected when people are busy. Safety takes commitment, focus and a worker’s full attention — year-round. The statistics bear that out. In 2009, agriculture ranked as the second highest sector nationally in occupational fatalities with 527 deaths, according to the National Safety Council. Construction ranked fi rst with 776 fatalities (see chart). It’s not a contest anyone wants to win, but transportation and warehousing came in a close third with 526 deaths that year. Respirators like this half mask are common when working with and transferring crop chemicals, says Pete Mutschler, environmental health and safety director for CHS Country Operations. It Can Happen to You Eldon and Chris Gould, Maple Park, Ill., have four full-time and three seasonal employees and are judicious about paying attention to safety. “With safety, it’s just too easy to push things to the back burner,” says Chris, who grows 3,000 acres of corn and soybeans, plus runs a 750-sow farrow-to-wean enterprise with his dad Eldon in northeast Illinois. “I took a safety class where the instructor asked if we’d had a variety of accidents on the farm, and we’d had several of them at one time or another,” says Chris, a former Navy pilot accustomed to stringent fl ight safety training programs. “That got me started developing our own crisis management plan for the farm. “The plan is about 80 percent complete. We’ve made it as simple as possible with a quick reference chart listing basics like who to call when an accident happens and phone numbers, how to take care of injuries and when to call the authorities,” he explains. “We want to make sure the plan works as it’s written. I don’t want to just talk about how to handle a crisis. I plan to pull from my Navy crisis management experiences and even conduct unannounced drills. For example, what would we do if a truck tips over in a ditch and we had Roundup running on the ground? We’ll pull out the plan, execute it and see what happens. > Your CHS Connection 7