Washington State has a strong agricultural base. It has approximately 36,000 farms growing a variety of crops. Near Lynden, beans, chickpeas, corn and wheat provide farmers with the means to make their livelihood. All this requires specific equipment. For farmers equipment, the right equipment is important if they want to do the job right. In Washington State, it also means safe equipment.
Common Types of Equipment
In Washington, certain piece of equipment common to many crop-growing farmers. They include:
- Tractor
- Plow or Plough
- Harrows
- Seeders
- Fertilizer Spreader
- Combine
- Threshers
- Balers
These represent the very basic tools a farmer and his or her employees require to grow, fertilize, reap and gather for sale. Using such farmers equipment can be dangerous.
Farm Safety and the Regulators in Washington State
In order to ensure the equipment functions safely without harming those who use them, Washington State – unlike any other American states, has embarked on a thorough plan of agricultural safety. In places such as Lynden, famers understand the need for protective measures. This includes helping farmers and workers understand how to work safely with farm equipment. The state regulators visit farms and educate them in the pros of running a safety-conscious farm.
The results are proof that such an approach pays off. On Washington farms, fatalities are rarer than they are in any other farming state. Moreover, when any accident or fatality occurs, the farm, no matter how small (less than 11), receives a visit from the regulators. Fines and warnings are laid. The result has been an improvement on the safety measures installed in the diverse equipment on farms across the state. Many farmers, understanding the common sense of such measures and the need to keep their employees safe have even gone ahead and willing outfitted their farming equipment with preventive and protective measures e.g. rollover protection for older tractors.
This is all part of a comprehensive workers’ safety program that includes farm workers. This approach has been an integral component of the state’s constitution 1889. It enshrined the protection of all employees working under dangerous conditions. It did not exempt farmers, large or small, as many other states did.
Safe Farmers Equipment
In Lynden, the fatality rate of farmers and their employees is the lowest in America. Some years, places within the state, such as Lynden, do not report an injury, let alone a fatality. This holds true even for the most common types of farmers equipment related accidents and deaths – tractor rollovers.
