Pami Aims To Improve Farm Safety

Source: Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food

A multi-year project aimed at improving farm safety is now entering a new phase.

Over the past year, the Prairie Agriculture Machinery Institute (PAMI) has been developing strategies and innovations to improve the safety of used farm equipment, and is now looking to spread the word to farmers about what they have found.

Jim Wasserman, PAMI’s Vice President of Saskatchewan Operations, said the project flowed out of a study sponsored by the provincial government’s Agriculture Development Fund, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Agriculture Safety Association, Alberta AgTech Centre and Bourgault Industries.

“We found that a lot of work was going into improving the safety of new farm equipment, but there was actually very limited engineering activity occurring with regard to the safety of used farm equipment,” Wasserman said.

He stated that the first phase of the project was to determine what engineering activity might provide maximum injury reduction for farmers. PAMI used existing research data from Canada, Australia and the United States, as well as consultations with over 40 individuals from groups representing researchers, machinery manufacturers, regulators and farmers themselves.

A number of issues were identified, but the top four became the focus of the next phase of the project:

1. Improving guarding for used equipment;

2. Increasing the amount of rollover protective structures;

3. Improving access to guarding for power take-offs; and

4. Improving guarding for grain auger intakes.

Wasserman said all of these issues require easy and economical solutions to make a difference, since the cost and the complexity of corrective action is often a barrier to it being implemented.

An example of how the PAMI team overcame this challenge can be found in the handbook developed to help producers quickly and cheaply build their own guarding if it is not readily available in the after-market. The handbook, called “On Guard!,” is written for farmers rather than for engineers.

“It’s intended to simplify the process, which can be fairly complex,” said Wasserman. “Through pictures and simplified instructions, we tried to make it something that farmers can access.”

A similar guidebook is planned for rollover structures with a target for material costs of under $250. Wasserman said that product is still a year or two away.

“There’s a lot of research to make sure we do it right, because there is potential liability associated with these types of recommendations. But we see there being huge potential, so we are going to work our way through it,” he stated.

For the time being, PAMI has created a reference book for farmers to quickly determine which after-market rollover structure will work for their equipment and where they can get it.

Simplicity is also the main goal for PAMI’s work related to grain auger intake guards. Wasserman noted that, if a guard is difficult to use, it often winds up on the ground rather than on the equipment.

“What we found is that standard auger intake guards were either bolted on or welded on, so if the guard was removed for maintenance or for storage, it was quite a pain to put it back on the auger,” he explained.

The auger intake guard design that is available on the PAMI website requires no tools to move it.

“It basically takes 10 seconds to move it from in position to out of position, and more importantly, 10 seconds to move it from out of position back into the guard position,” Wasserman observed. “Because of this, it doesn’t wind up forgotten in the long grass.”

An ongoing effort of PAMI is to determine if a manufacturer can be found to build the auger intake guards for a price point of less than $250.

The entire safety project is now moving into a new phase: getting the word out to producers.

“What we’ve come to realize is that, with every innovation, you’ve got to solve the problem and you’ve then got to get it into the hands of the users,” said Wasserman.

“Right now, across Canada, in each one of the provinces, there is a least one farm safety association that deals one-on-one with the farmers,” he added. “Part of this project is to market these innovations, thoroughly educate each of the farm associations on what we have available so that they can use a system that fits their province, and ultimately get these innovations into the hands of farmers.”

Information about the safety innovations, designs and guidebooks are available at PAMI’s website, www.pami.ca.

For more information contact:
Jim Wasserman, Vice President of Saskatchewan Operations
Prairie Agriculture Machinery Association
Phone: 1-800-567-7264, ext. 223