After an early wakeup morning, we had a nice group breakfast of granola courtesy of Dalona. Without much waiting we headed off to Ellsworth college to meet Dr. Kevin Butt to talk about farm safety. Once there we learned a few pieces of information such as the average Iowa farm size is 850 acres.  Then we delved into safety. The points of the discussion that really stood out to me were how high on the list of dangerous jobs farming ranks and the risks heavy equipment bring. Farming is the number 4 most dangerous job in America, and we saw a number of videos showing why. One of the biggest dangers was large equipment that runs the risk of angry drivers when being driven on the highway.  Such equipment can also strike electrical wires, fast moving parts which can snag someone’s clothing, and, if not careful, they can even flip. One of the more frightening, but positive stories we saw was that a man was walking on the corn in a grain bin while emptying it, and he fell through the corn hollow formed as it was being drawn out of the silo. He luckily survived, but few do, and Dr. Butt explained that emergency workers called to situations where a person is trapped into a grain bin usually are recovery situations rather than rescue ones. Although it was meant to scare us a bit, Dr. Butt left us with the memo that being aware and thinking through what your doing will prevent many accidents.

Next we talked about pigs and safety within pig farms, the industrial kind not the outdoor kind. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about that soon, but most of the talk was about how to get the job done while still keeping the pigs as stress free as possible. Our last topic with Dr. Butt was precision ag, which is exactly what it sounds like. This involves machinery to monitor inputs or outputs and even satellite-guided machinery to keep things as straight and efficient as possible. Some are even unmanned! Although not really marketable yet, he even discussed the possibility of drones to get these satellite images or even to do the planting or precise herbicide applications. This whole system is to improve efficiency by keeping everything precise and well monitored. After a short talk about the difference between red, blue, and green (Case, Kinze, and John Deere brand equipment) we left Dr. Butt for dinner at the Wallace house. This dinner briefly mentioned Henry Wallace, but primarily focused on local foods and serious conversations at the dinner table. Our focus was farmers markets, which I unfortunately have no experience with, but we talked a lot about the local food movement which I’m a bit more knowledgeable about. After a three course local dinner we finished up and headed back for the house and ended the night.

Tomorrow is supposed to be the biodiesel plant which will bring up my chemistry knowledge and interests so I hope to have a bit more to say then (hopefully in English and not tech-talk)!