Is this true any more? I thought most farms nowadays were owned by the big mega-conglomerates like ADM.
There are still quite a lot of small farms; more in some areas than others, and more in some areas of production than others.
I still get my hometown paper, which is a rural farming community. Every year or two there’s a story about a grain bin or silo extraction; the latest story was just last week. In that case the farmer survived. He had a cellphone but couldn’t move his arms to use it. He was discovered by his wife who was wondering why he was late for lunch. They had to cut the side of the steel grain bin open and let the corn spill out onto the ground to get to him.
My neighbor’s eldest son, the one who was most likely to be a successful farmer, died trapped in a silo. He had entered it in the winter wondering why the corn wasn’t flowing to his cattle feeders. He was on top of the grain, using a steel rod to break up the ice on top of the frozen corn, when the top layer collapsed and he fell into the corn. This was before the local fire department had a rescue crew. They certainly do now!
The answer is don’t enter the silo. Ever.
How do we make that unnecessary?
I’ve no idea. But I’m entirely certain that that idea has occurred, long ago, to quite a few people who know a lot more about silos and grain bins than I do.
Or I do.
I expect it’s entirely “safety costs money and it won’t happen to me”.
If all bins were insulated and heated to prevent ice formation and had integral agitators, the need to break up ice or blockages manually in person would be eliminated.
Perhaps someone could stand on a catwalk or other safe platform when entering a silo?
Since I don’t know much of anything about how they function, I’m not going to make wild assumptions about why people go into them, or how much a loaf of bread would cost or for that matter how well the grain would store if they were all heated and insulated; or for that matter whether that would eliminate any need to go into them.
I belonged to a 4-H club where the leader was Bob’s father. Bob happened to be the man who later died in the grain bin in my previous post.
Part of the club’s mission was to educate club members and area farmers on safety. This was when the orange triangular slow moving vehicles started being widely used. There were huge pushbacks on any new ideas because “that’s the way we always did it” and “nothing bad can happen to me”. Ear muffs for hearing protection? Forget that! (Seeing those old farmers later, every single one had hearing aids.) Never mind that safety equipment costs money and effort and time to use, compared to just climbing in and getting it done so the cattle can be fed.
Nothing is ever 100% clean. That’s why you have an immune system.
And reasonable tolerance. Lead (Pb) is bad and I’m surrounded by and exposed to some every day in wallpaint, drinking water, solder, combustion products, dodgy imported foods, hair coloring, etc. I just bought a new car battery 2 weeks ago, 20-30 pounds of lead in there and again in the old batt*. Or cadmium or ultraviolet light or tobacco smoke or chlorine or ozone or carbon monoxide. They’re all hazards to be aware of and to probably avoid in general but zero isn’t reasonable or possible, either.
*ugh, really need to get rid of that thing. I preemptively replaced it ild but working before ultracold wx arrived and it’s ready to go, warm & on a float charger. I’d imagined heroically awarding it to a neighbor in need of a jump or something but none appeared and now it’s an albatross and the charger fan is annoying. Free to a good home! A home. Any home. Today’s good.
Last time I bought an ordinary car battery was awhile ago, but IME there’s a core or exchange charge. IOW, bring in the old one to exhange for a new one and get some credit for the old one.
If you still have the purchase receipt for the new one, call them and ask if you can bring the old one in for $. Not gonna be much, but at least that ensures it enters a responsible disposal stream. Not the nearest water stream near one of your notso-responsible neighbors.
Which have their own safety issues. The brother of my classmate lost a limb to a grain auger. It jammed and then surged. Machines are merciless.
And now they’re adding intelligence to them?
Not SCUBA (Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus) gear. Depending upon what’s in the silo SCBA (Self-Contained Breathing Apparatus - what firefighters wear) may not even be required. See Post 25 for a quick description of how they’re rescued
Silos would be made from metal substantial enough to support themselves & aren’t necessarily even in the best of shape. It would not only require purchase & installation of said equipment but possibly installing electricity out to a structure that doesn’t have it & then the energy to run it. Add in the potential cost of a new silo if the existing one can’t support the new equipment (that would be extra weight up high if it’s a top mounted auger) & it becomes prohibitively expensive.
That’s why lockout/tagout procedures exist.
Whoops, sorry. And yes it may not be necessary — but have the trained rescue crew make that decision. Sometimes a silo is full of toxic gas.
Absolutely! It’s a confined space rescue; they should either get confirmation from a knowledgeable party (the farmer) as to what’s in the silo &/or sticking a portable gas meter in there to assess the air quality.
There’s lots of preplanning in the fire/rescue service. We have exactly zero silos in our first due so I don’t know a lot about them. FDs in different areas probably know a lot more than I do & even just telling them what grain is in the silo they’ll know how to attack the issue & any specific safety equipment that is not/needed.
I also know when we were called in to assist at a silo rescue some years back the OIC didn’t know a lot about them & a phone call was made to state farm bureau/agency (or whatever it’s formally called) who was able to give instrux on what to do/not do to perform the rescue.
Granted. The issue is always that safety costs money and there’s a huge tradeoff there.
Retrofitting thorough safety culture into industries that never had much is often impossible. Nobody can afford to be first to put in new equipment or expensive procedures while the rest of the installed base isn’t doing that nor bearing that cost.
Just a damned shame that something as essential and elemental as farming the food we all eat has to be so low-margin as to require lots of blood sacrifice to (maybe) eke out a profit.