Matters relating to agriculture, including farming and agribusiness.
Robert “Chip” Petrea was trying to feed damp yellow hay into a red baler on a wet Sunday afternoon in 1978, but the machine refused to pick it up.
Petrea was working in a low-lying field that frequently flooded. A storm was headed toward the 89-acre dairy farm located just outside Iuka in south-central Illinois, and he knew that the already soggy hay would be ruined by the coming rain if he could not find a way to get it to bale.
By Robert Holly/CU-CitizenAccess.org -- Congress reshaped American agriculture policy this week, officially passing a long-term Farm Bill that will strengthen crop insurance programs for…
Don McMasters
Firefighters practice placing a rescue tube during grain bin rescue training at the Danville Bunge facility, Sept. 17, 2013.
The deadliest year for grain-bin workers on record was 2010, when at least 26 workers died throughout the country, according to grain-bin entrapment data from Purdue University. There were more than 50 total incidents that year.
Darrell Hoemann
The grain facility in Sidney, IL on Tuesday, August 13, 2013
In July, a 55-year-old man working for Premier Cooperative in Sidney, Ill., suffocated and died after becoming trapped in a grain bin filled with corn.
Each day, more than 200 agriculture workers suffer an injury severe enough to miss work, according to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and…