Grain Talk Podcast: Professor Bill Field Discusses the Purdue Agricultural Confined Spaces Report (30 min.)

Date Posted: Apr 03, 2020

Each year since 1962, Purdue University compiles a highly anticipated report that compiles safety incidents related to confined spaces at agricultural facilities.

The "2019 Summary of U.S. Agricultural Confined Space-Related Injuries and Fatalities" has helped bring more attention to the area of agricultural safety and specifically grain entrapment and engulfment.

In this Grain Talk podcast, Purdue Professor Dr. Bill Field, one of the report's five authors, discusses the data, trends and recommendations in the latest report. While 2019 saw a slight uptick in overall cases, grain entrapment/engulfment jumped 26.7 percent. Much of that increase is attributed to the challenging harvest that led to difficulties with out-of-condition grain being stored in on-farm bins.

"If you look at the data, we're moving to where this problem is becoming predominantly one at the farm level, not so much as we have seen historically at commercial sites," Fields says in the podcast.

Despite this year's increase, the number of incidents has trended down over the past 10 years. How can this trend continue to improve as the safety issue shifts to smaller farm operations? Field discusses all this and more in the podcast.

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