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…
Photo provided by Chip Petrea