2020 has been a very trying year for us all. Since early spring, we have been living through the uncertainty of an unknown and unpredictable virus. We have been thrust into a different way of life.
Some of us learned how to work from home. Some of us (like doctors, nurses, other essential service workers and all those in the food industry) had to continue working as if . . .
nothing had changed while trying to dodge an invisible killer virus.
We moved from a predicted temporary interruption in our lives to not knowing when, if ever, life would return to the used-to-be normal. Although we have had more time to appreciate the important things in life like our family, our friends, a clean environment that we have to maintain and improve, and clean, safe food that reduces our need for medical intervention, our stress levels have multiplied mainly because of the impossible job of predicting and dealing with the unknown.
Farmers have always had to deal with unpredictable weather, yields, market prices and whether adequate skilled labour would be available for spring planting and harvest. The 2020 year was much less predictable because of shaky world politics, restrictions in movement and quarantines of essential workers and very fast changes in requirements of foods and food types.
Some foods had to be dumped, like milk because homeowners don’t require the same packaging as restaurants and schools. Some had to be plowed down because of unavailability of labour or changes in requirements like special shaped potatoes grown for the French fry market, which was the restaurant trade.
Over the years skilled farm labour has became harder to find and hence farm machinery has been getting bigger so one skilled operator can use a combine with a 40-foot grain head to replace four little combines with ten-foot heads and travel twice as quick in the field. Even if the 40-foot grain head is removed for transport, the bear combine is still 20 feet wide for travel down the road. These enormous machines have reflectors, flashing lights and flags to alert motorists just in case they didn’t see this 12 foot high and 20-foot wide monster on the road.
Some other farm machinery can be more than 16 feet wide and the operator cannot pull over to let you safely pass until there is a shoulder wide enough for the big machine and no double line on the road. Occasionally, an impatient driver tries to pass and causes a head-on, or strikes the giant farm machine. I have known of drivers to be decapitated by striking a wide machine. This is a terrible tragedy for the driver’s family. It is also tragic for the farm machine driver and especially for the fireman who uses the jaws of life to extricate the driver only to have the driver’s head roll onto the road at his feet.
Some of the large tractors and loaded manure tankers can weigh over 100,000 pounds. They cannot stop quickly and don’t move much when a little car hits them. Farmers are not making money driving up the road. It’s not a parade. They are just trying to get safely to the next field to work until the job is done or weather stops them.
Farming is the most dangerous occupation. It is more dangerous than being a soldier or a policeman. Some of my farming friends are missing fingers, arms, feet, legs, or even eyes. Dozens of farm friends have died in farming accidents. A dozen more have died from suicide because of stress.
Some farm machinery is the poorest engineered modern equipment. Aerospace and construction pays the most and gets the best. Some modern farm equipment still sold today has deadly design flaws. Most farm equipment has both steering and brakes powered by hydraulics driven by the engine. When the engine stalls or runs out of fuel neither the steering nor brakes work.
Our farmers are working long hours to give you the safest, most nutritious, tastiest food in the world. Please be patient and don’t lose your head.
Chris Judd is a farmer in Clarendon on land that has been in his family for generations.
gladcrest@gmail.com
