Several media outlets on Monday quoted organizers of the blockade at the Canada-U.S. border crossing at Coutts, Alta. as saying they would leave the area Tuesday morning.

Protestors in vehicles including commercial trucks, pickups and farm tractors formed a blockade halting traffic through the Coutts crossing, southeast of Lethbridge, and its sister crossing at Sweetgrass, Mont. starting Jan. 29. Single lanes of traffic later reopened but were blocked again Friday.

That blockade was formed in tandem with a demonstration still underway in Ottawa concerning current COVID-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers, among a number of grievances related to pandemic-related public health policy and federal politics generally.

The Ottawa protest and Coutts blockade — along with several other blockades formed at major Canada-U.S. crossings across the country, including at Windsor, Ont. and Emerson, Man. — on Monday became the subject of the federal government’s declaration of a “public order emergency” under the Emergencies Act.

According to the government’s release Monday, the declaration allows it to regulate and prohibit “public assemblies, including blockades, other than lawful advocacy, protest or dissent” and to designate and secure places where “blockades are to be prohibited” such as at international borders or approaches to same. It also blocks foreign nationals from entering Canada with “intent to participate in or facilitate a prohibited assembly.”

The declaration is effective for up to 30 days and subject to confirmation from both houses of Parliament.

The protestors’ stated plan to leave Coutts also comes amid damaging reports of violence at the blockade, plus 13 arrests Monday among those attending.

Specifically, Alberta RCMP said Monday, “a large farm tractor and a semi truck, both involved in the blockade, attempted to ram a police vehicle” on Sunday evening.

The RCMP member involved “was able to reposition and avoid the collision” and both the tractor and semi truck alleged to be involved in that incident have since been seized.

On Monday afternoon, RCMP said, a northbound semi approached the Mounties’ checkstop north of nearby Milk River when “the driver accelerated and drove towards our members.” The driver of that vehicle “swerved at the last moment” and was later arrested nearby “for Criminal Code offences.”

Also on Monday, RCMP said they “became aware of a small organized group within the larger Coutts protest” and had received information “that this group had access to a cache of firearms with a large quantity of ammunition… (and) a willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.”

RCMP on Monday morning carried out a search warrant on “three trailers associated to this criminal organization” and seized handguns, 13 long guns, a “large quantity of ammunition,” high-capacity magazines, “multiple sets” of body armour and a machete.

Eleven people were arrested at that time, RCMP said; another person was arrested later Monday after being stopped by police on the highway en route to the protest site, at which time “two weapons were seized.”

RCMP said Monday they would “resume efforts to end the illegal blockade” at Coutts and “encourage all participants who are involved in this illegal action to leave immediately or relocate to the designated site for the legal protest.”

“Our objective was to be here peacefully,” Marco Van Huigenbos, a protest organizer at Coutts, was quoted by CBC as saying later Monday. “To keep that message going, we want to peacefully leave Coutts and return to our families.”

‘Serious risks’

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, writing Monday on Twitter, made note of the arrests of people “believed to be involved in a potentially violent cell at the Coutts blockade” and hailed the “tactical operation that neutralized this potentially violent threat without incident.”

Also, Kenney wrote Monday, in spite of “threats and intimidation directed at tow truck operators and dealers, (the province) has successfully procured and staged the heavy equipment needed to remove commercial vehicles” at the protest site.

Kenney reiterated to remaining protestors that “it’s time to go home” and that their “continued violation of the rights of your fellow Albertans will not be tolerated.”

Separately, federal Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau said in a statement Monday that she met with “meat industry representatives from across Canada” to talk about the blockades’ impact on “the transportation of live animals and beef exports, the movement of feed for livestock and the overall food supply for Canadians.”

The industry reps on the call “told me that the blockade is having a significant impact on the livelihood of Canadian farm families and businesses who cannot sustain any more delays,” she said, and that “shipments of animals are being delayed and cancelled, which is creating serious risks to animal welfare.”

Allowing animals, feed and feed ingredients to again flow across the border “is essential to support producers and protect the welfare of animals travelling between Canada and the U.S.,” she said, noting border transit delays “also heighten the risk of spoilage of perishable goods” such as fruit and vegetables.

With the public order emergency now declared, she said, cabinet officials “are monitoring the situation closely and working with our federal and provincial partners to identify and mitigate disruptions.”

In a joint statement last week, several national- and provincial-level transport, trade, manufacturing and distributing groups warned that “hundreds of millions of dollars in cross-border trade” including perishables and other goods, “are being impacted or lost because of ongoing blockades.”

Farmer and food processor groups including the Canadian Federation of Agriculture, Canadian Agri-Food Trade Alliance, Canadian Cattlemen’s Association, National Cattle Feeders’ Association, Canadian Pork Council, Canadian Meat Council, Canadian Produce Marketing Association and Canadian Horticultural Council made a separate joint statement Friday calling for “immediate action by all parties to fully reopen Canada’s trade corridors.”

Canadian federal rules for cross-border travel by truckers and other essential workers were updated effective Jan. 15. Those rules currently require any Canadian truckers and other essential workers who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 and returning to Canada to follow the same quarantine protocols as other unvaccinated Canadians returning to Canada. Unvaccinated foreign truckers attempting to enter Canada are to be turned away.

The U.S. government has had the same rules in place for foreign unvaccinated truckers since Jan. 22 — with the effect of prohibiting unvaccinated Canadian truckers from bringing freight into the United States. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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The new program, dubbed ‘Claas Used,’ will offer warranty protection on certified late-model units in Canada and the U.S., along with lower-rate financing through Claas Financial Services.

The Claas Used program replaces the ‘First Claas Used’ program set up in 2018, which in turn was billed as the “next generation” plan following the Lexion Field Ready Reconditioned program set up in 2011.

The new program also scraps the First Claas Used system of gold-, silver- and bronze-level classifications on used Claas equipment in favour of a new certified pre-owned (CPO) standard.

The ‘Claas Used’ plan comes as “supply chain disruptions and financial constraints have affected many growers across North America,” the company said Tuesday.

“By combining the superior power and efficiency of Claas machines at a pre-owned price with a one-year protection plan and excellent low-rate financing, growers who take advantage of the Claas certified pre-owned program can have the best of both worlds,” Allen Miller, the company’s remarketing manager for North America, said in Tuesday’s release.

The company will also offer “flexible” protection plans for CPO combines, forage harvesters and tractors under the Claas Used program.

All certified machines to be sold under the program will have been “inspected, repaired and approved based on rigorous criteria by Claas certified technicians,” the company said.

The one-year plan will also provide repairs, done with Claas parts, plus standard one-year drive-train protection with an option to upgrade to a “comprehensive” protection plan.

The level-up plan, dubbed Maxi Care Comprehensive Extended Protection, will be “an optional layer of coverage” for Claas CPO machines meeting the “strictest inspection standards.”

On eligible combines and forage harvesters, the standard one-year plan will provide protection for either a year or 500 hours of use, whichever comes first, with a $500 deductible.

On tractors, the coverage will be for either a year or 1,000 hours of use, whichever comes first, with a $500 deductible — or $250 under the Maxi Care plan.

Eligible CPO combines and forage harvesters must have fewer than 2,500 hours use and be no older than five years of age by machine model year. Eligible tractors must also be no older than five years, with less than 5,000 hours’ use.

Equipment certified under the Claas Used program will be available through the company’s used equipment website. As of Tuesday afternoon, in the CPO category, just three self-propelled forage harvesters are listed for sale on that site, all in the U.S.

For the Canadian market, the company said it will offer a low financing rate on CPO Lexion combines and Jaguar forage harvesters, at zero per cent for the first 24 months up to a maximum financed amount of $450,000. That offer expires Dec. 31 this year.

Claas bills itself as an early adopter of the CPO system for sales of pre-owned equipment, which has given major manufacturers the opportunity to boost their brands’ sales beyond the showroom floor.

John Deere and Agco rolled out CPO programs for their late-model equipment in North America starting in 2014, followed in 2015 by Case IH and New Holland. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

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After a fifth harvest with low grain prices, made worse last fall by the U.S.-China trade war, the 68-year-old and his family were calling it quits. Farming also was taking a physical toll on him, he said; he’d suffered a heart attack 15 months before.

It took less than four hours to sell off all the tractors, combines, and other farm equipment at the Taphorn retirement sale, ending a family tradition that had survived nearly a century.

“We went through the bad times in the ’70s and ’80s,” said Jim, 68, broadshouldered and stocky. “In some ways, this is worse.”

Across the Midwest, growing numbers of grain farmers are choosing to shed their machinery and find renters for their land, all to stem the financial strain on their families, a dozen leading farm-equipment auction houses told Reuters. As these older grain farmers are retiring, fewer younger people are lining up to replace them.

The trend has created boom times for the auction houses, which report that their retirement business has grown 30 per cent or more over the past six months, compared to the same period a year earlier.

But it is expected to put a strain on the agricultural supply chain: It means fewer customers for seed and chemical companies, fewer machine buyers, and fewer suppliers for grain merchants.

The revival of the family farming tradition proved short lived.

In the wake of the U.S. recession of 2007-08, the lure of high grain prices drew young people from their city jobs to their family’s fields.

By 2012, farm profits were flourishing as corn and soybean prices soared amid global demand and tight supplies. For the first time in decades, the number of producers aged 44 or younger in the Midwest grew.

From the financial crisis in 2008 through 2012, their ranks increased more than 40 per cent in Iowa and Illinois, nearly 57 per cent in Indiana and 60 per cent in Kansas, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Taphorn’s son Tom, who works as a district manager at a cattle feed company near Manhattan, Kansas, was among those who wanted to return home to farm with his parents.

But the father of three couldn’t make it work. During the boom, Tom sought to expand by renting more land. But as grain prices fell, most landlords refused to lower their rates. It was beyond Tom’s reach, leaving him and his parents with too little land to till to cover two families’ expenses.

Tom kept his job. Jim and Karen knew no one else in their family would take over their business. So they decided to sell their equipment and rent out their land.

Comes down to math

At the Taphorns’ auction, Karen, 68, reached for her husband’s hand, squeezing it hard.

“Karen, it’s OK to shed a tear,” auctioneer Dan Sullivan said as she pressed her face into her husband’s shoulder. “It’s the end of an era.”

Farmer retirement rates are not tracked by either state or U.S. government agencies, but federal data shows the ranks of farmers are gradually aging. The average age of U.S. farm operators was 57.5 years in 2017, up from 54.3 years in 1997.

The number of farms is shrinking, too, as the industry increasingly is consolidated either into the hands of large-scale operators or tiny niche crop growers. Mid-size farms — those with annual sales of more than $50,000 but less than $5 million — are dwindling.

For many families, leaving farming is a painful but simple calculation: The trade war with China, set off by tariffs imposed by the Trump administration, has lasted nearly 10 months.

China, the top buyer of U.S. soybeans, the nation’s most valuable agricultural export, has dramatically reduced its purchases. Grain prices have remained stubbornly low and operating costs are rising fast.

Such factors now are “speeding things up” among farmers deciding to retire, says H. Andrew Pyron, chief executive of Big Iron Auctions in St. Edward, Nebraska.

Ill-timed bet

In the spring of 2018, Mike and Linda Manson of De Soto, Kansas, decided to plant soy on all their fields.

It was an ill-timed bet, coming just before China applied retaliatory tariffs on U.S. soybeans

By summer, U.S. soybean exports had plummeted. Heavy rains hammered the plants, reducing their crop. Finding help at harvest was tough, too, because healthy young people are hard to come by in the industry these days.

“I had one guy, a retiree, helping me. But he’s fat and his knees gave out on him, so he couldn’t get into the combine,” Mike Manson, 69, said wryly.

The erosion of multi-generational family farms is painful for sons and daughters as well.

“I’m the only son of an only son, and I was still trying to figure out my path back to the farm,” said Sam Hudson, 34, who co-owns an agricultural marketing firm in central Illinois.

His father has a small farm. Even if the men borrowed $1 million to get enough land, equipment and other supplies to scale up the operation, the business might only break even, given current grain prices and land rent costs.

“It doesn’t make any sense right now,” he said.

A boon to auctioneers

The budget-conscious farmers who remain seek deals on quality used equipment rather than splurging at dealerships, auctioneers say.

Steffes Group, a top auction firm in the upper Midwest, recently had to juggle staff to cover three large retirement auctions in three states on the same day, auctioneer Scott Steffes said. Big Iron Auction’s retirement farm business has surged 40 per cent this year.

“Up until now, there wasn’t a lot of motivation to exit farming,” Steffes said. “Now, what I’m hearing from folks is, ‘It’s no longer fun to farm.’”

Many farmers don’t have retirement safety nets. Now they’re worried that if they keep going, they’ll have to take on debt against land they own, which will threaten their income stream long term.

“We’re getting calls every day from farmers looking to sell off their equipment, but keep the land,” said Luke Sullivan of Sullivan Auctioneers, headquartered in Hamilton, Illinois. “They want to rent out their ground, because that land is their retirement.”

Some renters propose to split farm expenses and pay landlords in corn or soybeans, not cash, the modern equivalent of sharecropping. But typically retirees seek renters who pay top dollar, tenants who are big and can farm thousands of acres.

The Taphorns were different: They turned down several huge operations as renters, instead choosing to be paid less by a young family trying to expand their business.

Bidders swarm in

For weeks, out-of-town farmers and machinery buyers had called the Taphorns to ask questions about their equipment.

On auction day, buyers from four different states joined the crowd of locals. Bidders also flocked to the Sullivan Auctioneers website.

Jim’s tractor went to a middle-aged farmer in Illinois. Another farmer from Iowa grabbed his planter. The soil ripper went to a guy in Kansas, about 100 miles away.

A couple of weeks ago, old friends started calling, asking for help in their fields.

One was in his early 60s and had injured his leg over the winter. Jim assured his friend he’d be there — forever a farmer, even in retirement.

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The resource uses different methods — including a “hands-on simulated entanglement scenario” — to educate children and youth about the dangers of rotating PTO shafts, said provincial farm safety youth co-ordinator Janice Donkers.

“It has three educational components that provide an excellent overview of the importance of safety around PTOs: an entanglement demonstration, a reaction time activity, and discussion points for conversations about the risks and safety measures,” she said.

A PTO shaft on a tractor rotates at 540 or 1,000 revolutions per minute, and is especially dangerous if shields or guards have been removed, altered, or damaged. Typical injuries involving PTOs include amputations, severe cuts, multiple breaks, or spine and neck injuries.

“It’s physically impossible for a person to react fast enough to avoid injury or death from contact with a rotating PTO,” said Donkers. “With an average reaction time of less than a second, a person caught in a PTO spinning at 1,000 r.p.m. would be wrapped around the PTO shaft six times before they knew what was happening.”

In addition to have properly secured guards and shields, safety measures include wearing close-fitting clothes, removing drawstrings from sweatshirts and jackets, and tying up long hair. PTOs should only be engaged and disengaged from the tractor seat (not when standing behind or beside the tractor) and under no circumstances should anyone step over a PTO. Always walk around. Young children should have a safe play area with a fence or some other physical boundary.

To borrow the PTO Display at no cost or to obtain other educational resources, displays and publications, email farm.safety@gov.ab.ca. The Alberta Farm Safety Program website can be found by going to www.agriculture.alberta.ca and searching for ‘farm safety.’

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It’s just physics, said Norbert Beaujot.

“There is a big waste in pulling something versus having it mounted onto the body of the prime mover,” he says. “(Pulling) burns more fuel and requires more weight.”

As well, not having to pull implements eliminates the need for “all the wheels and hitches and fancy folding devices, so that affects weight.”

“Long story short, tractors need about 150 pounds per horsepower,” said Beaujot. “When a tractor’s towing something at low speeds it needs that ratio not to spin out, so a 200-horsepower tractor has to be as much as 30,000 pounds.”

That weight comes in part from ballast in the front, back, and tires of the tractor plus the weight of the cab and other creature comforts. Beaujot’s machine weighs just 12,000 pounds but the implement and products it’s carrying provide sufficient weight for things such as draft and tractive effort needed to operate on soil.

The platform’s light weight also gives it an edge when it comes to reducing soil compaction. “With a smaller unit your tanks are much smaller and your localized compaction is a lot less,” said Beaujot. “We were able to design the DOT unit so it creates a tramline effect for the spraying components. It’s in rows that aren’t too wide and yet spread out enough that the compaction isn’t crazy.

“You don’t have that luxury when you’re trying to carry 1,000 bushels and you have a 600-horsepower tractor. A lot of the weight and horsepower on conventional tractors is a pure waste because when we build a tractor that pulls something we have to put a whole bunch of weight on it that’s equal to what’s behind it. With DOT, the weight is put to it by the product itself.”

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Forcing farmers to buckle up is just one — although likely the most controversial — of 142 recommendations from four “technical working groups” established to turn Bill 6 into actual occupational health and safety (OH&S) rules on Alberta farms.

There was a lot of agreement on which parts of the OH&S rulebook should apply to farms, but there were also some key disagreements, said Kent Erickson, a member of one of the working groups and co-chair of AgCoalition (Alberta Farm and Ranch Safety Coalition).

“I’m not against regulation,” he said. “But if it’s going to cost us more, we have to make sure we’re getting back increased farm safety, not just a regulatory burden.”

And that was exactly the argument made against mandatory use of seatbelts.

• Hear more on this week’s ‘Between the Rows’ podcast, online Thursday, Nov. 16!

The report of that working group notes some of its members view wearing seatbelts as “impractical, inconvenient, uncomfortable, and unwarranted.” The report doesn’t detail the debate, but the farmers on that group appear to have unsuccessfully argued that seatbelts don’t make sense in the everyday world of farming.

“The reason for this is that farm equipment in open fields is travelling very slowly and farmers are multi-tasking — primarily monitoring equipment that is being pulled behind tractors,” the report says of the “considerations” taken into account.

“Up to 80 per cent of the time, the farmer is turned in the seat facing backwards. It is not uncommon for farmers to be operating equipment in this way many hours at a time.”

• Read more: Bill 6 is law — now we need a plan to move forward
• Read more: Alberta ag minister promises to work with farm groups

The committee considered a recommendation to just require seatbelt use when on roads or when on terrain that is “susceptible to rollover.”

Nevertheless, the majority voted for mandatory seatbelt use all the time, saying they have been shown to save lives, their use in cars is now widespread, and if required in farm equipment, it will “force innovation” on equipment manufacturers and make them come up with restraints that are “practical (and) comfortable.”

Erickson wasn’t on the committee that came up with that recommendation, but has his own example of a recommended rule that doesn’t make sense in real life — logbooks.

The recommendation is to make producers carry logbooks in farm equipment that operators can show to an inspector to prove they’re compliant with OH&S regulations, including regulations around hours of work.

“We see in the trucking industry that there’s duplicate logbooks in trucks — it happens all the time,” said Erickson, who farms near Irma.

“If and when they do get stopped, they have a ‘legal’ logbook, and our industry doesn’t want that. We don’t want to see any regulations that just automatically push farmers and ranchers to break the law.”

Lots of reading

The province said it waited until harvest was mostly over before releasing the recommendations. The public has 11 weeks (until Jan. 15) to offer its views.

“Since receiving the reports, government has been reviewing the recommendations, and we now look forward to hearing directly from Albertans on what they think,” said Labour Minister Christina Gray.

“We encourage all Albertans — whether they’re involved directly in farming and ranching, or whether they go to farmers’ markets — to go online and provide their feedback on these reports.”

Opening the consultation to the general public “is going to be a challenge,” said Erickson.

“Relating it to how it’s going to work on the farm is really tough for somebody who isn’t in the industry,” he said. “It would be kind of like asking me to comment on a regulation that’s going to affect, say, a coal mine. I don’t have any insights into how a coal mine is run.

“So I’m a little concerned that the responses we might get may be a bit uninformed because people don’t understand how things work on the farm.”

The sheer number of recommendations — 142 in all — and the technical language of the reports will be another hill to climb for people providing their feedback.

“Making sure you have the OH&S code while reviewing potential changes to the code is going to be an important part of reviewing this work,” advised Gray.

That’s not practical for most Albertans, said Erickson.

“Our group took half the code and we broke it down line by line as we went through it, and even I was confused and misinterpretin

g and misunderstanding how we’re going to apply that to a farm. It’s really tricky,” he said, noting his group had over a year to review the material.

“For a farmer, it’s going to be a challenge. There’s a lot of nuances and a lot of wording in the code that is hard to interpret on a farm.”

Recommendations

While the technical working groups covered everything from education, training, and current best practices, the real meat and potatoes is in applying the safety code to Alberta farms.

In many cases, the groups were able to do that with no or only minor wording changes, said Erickson.

“There was consensus on a lot of parts, but we also made a lot of changes,” he said. “So a lot of the consensus was on the changes. We didn’t agree to OH&S verbatim.”

But there were also about 20 recommendations where the groups were not able to reach consensus, “and those are some pretty big ones.”

“We want to analyze it and ask, ‘Is it creating an issue?’ If it is, we want to fix it, but if it isn’t, why put a regulation in place that’s just going to cost people money?” said Erickson.

Other recommendations — including retrofitted rollover protection on older equipment, fall arrest systems on bins, and requiring independent engineering for certification of equipment and machinery repairs — underscore ongoing concerns about cost and practicality.

And how the government eventually implements those provisions will be the difference between compliance and non-compliance for the agriculture industry.

“The OH&S code book is intense,” said Erickson. “If you just throw that in any industry’s face and say, ‘You have to meet every single code to the letter,’ they’re just going to throw it back at you.”

Next steps

That’s why it’s critical — despite the challenges — for farmers to sit down with these reports and share their views, Erickson added.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of public feedback from people who don’t understand our industry very well,” he said. “So because we understand our industry, it’s very important for farmers and their workers to pick some big issues and go through them.

“Hopefully we can build some farm- and ranch-specific wording and requirements — just like other industries have — to make it work for farms and ranches.”

The government will continue to review the recommendations, said Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil Carlier.

“A great deal of work has been done, but a great deal remains,” he said.

AgCoalition will remain heavily involved.

“We’ve had a very good dialogue with the Ministry of Labour. Our dialogue has been very open. But what happens next is going to be key,” said Erickson. “Hopefully we can be part of that very deliberate process.”

The full reports can be found at the Alberta Government website (search for ‘farm and ranch’).

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“Riding on the tractor with Dad has been a long-standing tradition for many farm families,” said Janice Donkers, youth farm safety co-ordinator with Alberta Agriculture and Forestry.

“It’s not uncommon to hear the older generations boast about how young they were when they first began riding on or operating farm machinery. However, you may want to think twice the next time your child asks to tag along.”

Machinery run-overs and rollovers account for the majority of fatalities among children. These types of agricultural accidents occur during play or work.

“An excellent way to help prevent these types of accidents is to instil the ‘One Seat, One Rider’ rule,” said Donkers. “Don’t carry more passengers on machinery or vehicles than recommended. Just like driving in a car, this ensures that everyone has a proper seatbelt. Extra riders can be thrown or fall from the cab, accidentally hit a lever or button, or even distract the operator.”

Although manufacturers are now including instructional seats in tractors, combines, and harvesters, their main purpose is to enhance the training of tractor operators.

“While this ‘buddy’ seat may seem like a great option to give a child a ride, the seat is not intentionally designed for children,” she said. “Agriculture production is fast paced, and many children experience injuries by simply being a bystander. Therefore, it’s good practice to continue to discourage children from riding in tractors and other farming equipment. By removing children from this dynamic work environment, the risk for potential injury is greatly decreased.”

Here are some other recommended safety practices:

• Always walk around your machinery or vehicle before starting the equipment. Children may be hiding in your blind spots.
• Never allow children to climb and play on or near farm equipment, even if it’s not in use.
• Always lock vehicles and machinery when you’re finished using them. Remove the keys and keep them out of reach of children.
• Equipment that may fall (such as hydraulic buckets and hoists) should always be left in the down position.
• Designate a safe play area with protected boundaries (such as a fence) that is far away from vehicle traffic and where machinery is operated or stored.
• Apply ‘No Play Area’ decals to all farm equipment as a visual reminder. (These decals are available free of charge through the Alberta Farm Safety Program by calling 310-FARM.)

“While it’s difficult to turn down a child from a seemingly innocent activity, it’s easier to bury a tradition than a child,” said Donkers. “Next time your child asks for a ride, explain the ‘One Seat, One Rider’ rule.”

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• Read more: Ribbons to promote ag safety

Removing duals is a two-person job and the tractor should be in a flat area, the keys removed from the ignition, and both front wheels and the dolly should be blocked.

Work gloves and safety footwear are mandatory while removing duals, and hearing protection and safety goggles are also mandatory when using an impact wrench.

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More than 1,000 people came from across the Prairies and Ontario, with online bidders joining from the U.S. and the United Kingdom for the sale handled by Dunkle Auction Services.

A very rare 1938 John Deere “D” with the exhaust manifold and the air intake on the right-hand side (only three are known to exist in the world) sold for $29,000. The smallest John Deere ever made — a seven-horsepower LA model — sold online for $12,000.

The post Antique tractors at auction offer a trip back through time appeared first on Alberta Farmer Express.

“To increase the safety of baling procedures while ensuring the job gets done, look for hazards related to baler operation, handling, transporting, and stacking,” said farm safety coordinator Kenda Lubeck.

Here’s a list of potential hazards.

Handling:

• Ensure no children play near hay balers, carriers, and stackers.
• Properly train operators handling tractors, front-end loaders, or forklifts.
• Tractors with cabs, FOPS (falling object protective structure) or four-poster ROPS (roll-over protective structure) are highly recommended. Two-poster tractor ROPS offer no operator protection from bales falling back off of forks or bale-loading frames.
• Ensure bale-loading attachments on tractors and forklifts are secure and well fitted.
• Carry bales as low to the ground as possible.
• Ensure sufficient counterbalance on a tractor or forklift vehicle.
• Hydraulic control valve should be specific to the front-end loader attachment.

Baler operation:

• Ensure baler is properly connected to the tractor.
• Make certain adequate safety guards are fitted.
• No one should ever be allowed to ride on the baler.
• Watch for and clear any build-up of loose, combustible material in the baler.
• Ensure an updated fire extinguisher is fitted to the machine.
• Stop engine, disengage PTO, and apply flywheel brake (on square balers) prior to making adjustments or repairs.
• Take extra care when reversing or turning the machine.
• Work during the day when there is adequate lighting.

Stacking:

• Land stack on even ground.
• Stacks should be clear of overhead powerlines.
• Stacked round bales should be adequately chocked and the borders posted.
• Watch for damaged bales at base of stack.
• Stack bales tightly and at a stable height.
• Do not stack bales higher than safe operating height of farm tractor or forklift.
• Never allow children to play on stacked bales.
• Do not handle more bales than is safe for the loader.

Transporting:

• Carry heavy loads of bales with a sturdy trailer.
• Ensure proper restraining frames on the back and front of trailer.
• Use fitted hooks so ropes can be used to secure load.
• Watch for overhead powerlines on or near roads.
• Avoid rough terrain that can cause bales to become unstable.
• Travel at safe speeds at all times.
• People should never ride on loaded hay trailers. This is highly dangerous.

“After making this list, check each hazard that has been spotted to assess how likely this hazard is to injure someone, and how severe that injury would be,” said Lubeck. “After this hazard assessment, take the list of hay baling and stacking hazards and number them in order of priority, so that those most likely to cause injury or harm can be addressed first.”

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