Why it matters: A field fire can lead to catastrophic damage to equipment and crops, and be potentially fatal to both farmers and first responders.

For a field fire to start, combustible materials must be ignited under the right conditions. An ignition source could be a spark from a harvest machine or heat from a worn bearing. Combustible materials include the crop or residue that is accumulated within the machine, windrows of straw or stubble in the field. Harvest fires are most likely to occur and spread rapidly during dry and hot periods, but they can even occur in damp conditions.

To reduce the likelihood and impact of a harvest fire, develop a plan that includes avoidance, preparation, and response components. This plan should be written down, shared with staff on an annual basis, revised when a new field or equipment is purchased/rented and posted somewhere easily accessible (such as the shop or equipment cab).  You can even share and get feedback on the plan from your local fire department.

Elements of your plan could include:

Avoidance — prevent the field fire from occurring
• Have a plan! Create a plan, review the plan, practice the procedures of the plan. Doing so makes you more aware of risks around you.
• Keep equipment well maintained and working properly.
• Ensure equipment is clean both internally and externally including the working areas of the equipment, the operator area and the external mirrors (i.e. to increase visibility).
• Avoid parking equipment, including trucks, on stubble.
• Use caution when pulling equipment into the field with the pickup and remove the truck from the field quickly.
Preparation — in case a fire occurs
• Ensure that 911 address markers are in place and are legible/visible to assist fire response.
• Know the location of each field where you are harvesting including the 911 address and other directions should a 911 sign not be present at the field entrance for quick relay of the information to first responders.
• All field locations should be documented and everyone should know the 911 location of the current harvest site (including custom harvesters).
• Have the GPS location of field entrances recorded and organized on smartphones or train people how to use the “drop GPS pin” function on their smartphones (not all fire crews are equipped to receive GPS pins, but the practice is increasing). GPS pins may be sent direct to personal phones of responders if they have the phone number of the person at the scene, supply this phone number to the 911 operator.
• Identify multiple exit points from every field.
• Be aware of the seasonal conditions. Is it hot, dry and windy?
• Be vigilant and check frequently for fires that can start behind your equipment.
• Have a fire extinguisher available in all equipment. Ensure the fire extinguishers are properly charged and inspected regularly.
• Have a larger sprayer nurse tank filled with water, with the pump fully fueled and hitched to a tractor sitting in the field.
• A full liquid manure spreader can replace the water tank.
• Have a large tillage implement like a disc or cultivator hooked up and sitting in the field ready to deploy quickly in order to build a bare soil fire break ahead of a fire.
• Ensure that all fields have “ready” access for fire trucks. If access is impeded, tell 911 when reporting the fire.
• Identify all nearby sources of water (ponds, hydrants, streams) that fire services can use to fill tankers, have these mapped and included with your plan.
• Prepare a binder to be placed in all equipment and office that includes field locations, marks field access points, identifies water sources, includes emergency numbers and response procedures.
• Share the plan with your team, including custom harvesters and ensure they know it.

Response — what to do if a fire occurs

Before any attempt to extinguish the fire – call 911
• Provide clear and concise address and/or direction to the field.
• Be able to supply the location of the field entrance relative to the closest marked 911 roadside address post.
• Try to have a person familiar with the fire location meet the fire service at the farm entrance, especially where the fire location can not be observed easily from the farm entrance.
• Follow all directions provided by first responders.
• Notify any farm staff on-site before attempting to extinguish the fire.

Do not put yourself or others at risk!
• Only deploy the water tank or tillage implement if you can do so safely and quickly after the fire has started.
• Remember fires spread rapidly, and can change direction quickly, particularly under windy and hot conditions, be observant of conditions.

Preparing for a harvest fire is critical to reduce the risk of injury or death to staff and first responders. It can also avoid equipment and crop losses, which can economically cripple a farm. Consider preparing a written plan, sharing it annually with staff, and practicing it. If your team knows the safety procedures for where they are working with equipment and are aware of the potential for fire to start, they can be ready to react. That will help protect people and assets.

Being prepared for equipment or field fires is just one component of a “whole farm” emergency plan. OMAFRA offers many resources for building a “whole farm” emergency plan on its website. Many excellent resources for on farm emergency planning are readily available on the internet. Review several and find what works for your operation. Taking the time to build a comprehensive farm safety and emergency response plan is good management.

The post Avoiding, preparing for and reacting to harvest fires appeared first on Farmtario.

Field fires can happen in any crop and at any time but tend to be more prevalent in mid-summer during cereal harvest. For a field fire to start, combustible materials must be ignited under the right conditions. An ignition source could be a spark from a harvest machine or heat from a worn bearing. Combustible materials include the crop or residue that is accumulated within the machine, windrows of straw or stubble in the field. Harvest fires are most likely to occur and spread rapidly during dry and hot periods, but they can even occur in damp conditions.

To reduce the likelihood and impact of a harvest fire, develop a plan which includes Avoidance, Preparation and Response components. This plan should be written down, shared with staff on an annual basis, revised when a new field or equipment is purchased/rented and posted somewhere easily accessible (such as the shop or equipment cab). You can even share and get feedback on the plan from your local fire department.

Elements of your plan could include:

1. Avoidance – prevent the field fire from occurring

• Have a plan! Creating a plan, review the plan, practice the procedures of the plan. Doing so makes you more aware of risks around you.
• Keeping equipment well maintained and working properly.
• Ensuring equipment is clean both internally and externally including the working areas of the equipment, the operator area and the external mirrors (i.e. to increase visibility).
• Avoiding parking equipment, including trucks, on stubble.
• Use caution when pulling equipment into the field with the pickup and remove the truck from the field quickly.

2. Preparation – in case a fire occurs

• Ensure that 911 address markers are in place and are legible/visible to assist fire response.
• Know the location of each field where you are harvesting including the 911 address and other directions should a 911 sign not be present at the field entrance for quick relay of the information to first responders.
• All field locations should be documented and everyone should know the 911 location of the current harvest location (including custom harvesters).
• Have the GPS location of field entrances recorded and organized on smartphones or train people how to use the “drop GPS pin” function on their smartphones (not all fire crews are equipped to receive GPS pins, but the practice is increasing). GPS pins may be sent direct to personal phones of responders if they have the phone number of the person at the scene, supply this phone number to the 911 operator.
• Identify multiple exit points from every field.
• Be aware of the seasonal conditions. Is it hot, dry and windy?
• Be vigilant and check frequently for fires that can start behind your equipment.
• Have a fire extinguisher available in all equipment. Ensure the fire extinguishers are properly charged and inspected regularly.
• Have a larger sprayer nurse tank filled with water, with the pump fully fueled and hitched to a tractor sitting in the field.
• A full liquid manure spreader can replace the water tank.
• Have a large tillage implement like a disc or cultivator hooked up and sitting in the field ready to deploy quickly in order to build a bare soil fire break ahead of a fire.
• Ensure that all fields have “ready” access for fire trucks. If access is impeded, tell 911 when reporting the fire.
• Identify all nearby sources of water (ponds, hydrants, streams) that fire services can use to fill tankers, have these mapped and included with your “plan”.
• Prepare a binder to be placed in all equipment and office that includes field locations, marks field access points, identifies water sources, includes emergency numbers and response procedures.
• Share the “plan” with your team, including custom harvesters and ensure they know it.

3. Response – what to do if a fire occurs

• Before any attempt to extinguish the fire – call 911.
  • Provide clear and concise address and/or direction to the field.
  • Be able to supply the location of the field entrance relative to the closest marked 911 roadside address post.
  • Try to have a person familiar with the fire location meet the fire service at the farm entrance, especially where the fire location can not be observed easily from the farm entrance.
  • Follow all directions provided by first responders.
• Notify any farm staff on-site before attempting to extinguish the fire
• Do not put yourself or others at risk!
  • Only deploy the water tank or tillage implement if you can do so safely and quickly after the fire has started.
  • Remember fires spread rapidly, and can change direction quickly, particularly under windy and hot conditions, be observant of conditions and able to react quickly.

NOTE: 2020 – Rural Fire Departments have heightened concern about COVID-19. They are concerned that the virus could quarantine their entire fire hall in the event of a positive test and make emergency response delayed or unavailable for significant periods of time. They respectfully request that “social distancing” advice be respected as much as possible during an emergency call.

Providing the 911 address for entrance may not be enough for responders to find the fire quickly. If the fire location is not visible from that entry point, have someone meet the fire service at the farm entrance and/or supply GPS coordinates or clear direction on how to find the fire. Topography and bush may block site of the fire from the road access or even the farm yard.

Preparing for a harvest fire is critical to reduce the risk of injury or death to staff and first responders. It can also avoid equipment and crop losses, which can economically cripple a farm. Consider preparing a written plan, sharing it annually with staff, and practicing it. If your team knows the safety procedures for where they are working with equipment and  are aware of the potential for fire to start, they can be ready to react which will go along way to protecting people and assets.

Being prepared for equipment or field fires is just one component of a “whole farm” emergency plan. See other resources on OMAFRA’s website for building a “whole farm “emergency plan. Many excellent resources for on farm emergency planning are readily available on the internet. Review several and find what works for your operation. Taking the time the build a comprehensive Farm Safety and Emergency Response Plan is good management!

Ian McDonald, Vicki Hilborn and Alex Barrie are with the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA).

The post Avoiding, preparing for and reacting to harvest fires appeared first on Farmtario.

By lowering tire pressure, we reduce the impact of soil compaction up to a point, which is a function of the ability of a tire to tolerate the load and speed in an under-inflated state.

Tire pressures in bias tires cannot be reduced for many reasons including the technology of the tire, and how it stays on the bead. Radial tires have the ability to reduce tire pressure and keep the integrity of the tire so long as it occurs under slow speeds operating in a straight line.

Reducing tire pressures and running on the road greatly reduces safety and increases fuel consumption and tire wear.

Although central inflation-deflation systems (CTIS) are becoming more common, the tire industry is still adjusting to farmer demand for reduced soil compaction through reduced tire pressures during field operations.

Many producers incorporate these reduced tire pressures as a whole or with CTIS systems and accept that they may be voiding the warranty on the tires.

When you look at a tire that has a significant bulge due to low inflation pressure, it appears to be getting wider and thus the impression is that it makes soil compaction occur over a larger area in the field.

Comparing the images of the manure spreader, we see that the low-pressure tire looks wider. While the side wall bulges, and may actually touch the soil, the tire width illustration points out that tires that are deflated are getting longer, not wider in terms of weight carrying footprint. This is the goal since we have been causing compaction in the wheel track, to reduce compaction we don’t want to make the compacted area wider.

With a longer footprint from reduced tire pressure the potential compaction region within the field is the same and the overall impact is lower because we have spread the implement weight over more square inches of area within the same track width.

Many farmers look at the tires on the right side of the bottom manure spreader image and feel queasy. How can that work, they ask themselves? Farmers who have moved to CTIS systems or have decided to go with lower inflation pressures and road travel at a slower speed feel the opposite.

In the tire width image, the same-sized tire (480/80R50) is inflated at different tire pressures in examples A, B and C (see below) at an axle load of 24,500 pounds. The red horizontal arrows are the same width and show that as the inflation pressure declines, the tire stays the same width. Note how the length of the footprint increases by 20 per cent by reducing the tire inflation from 31 to 18 psi.

Image C, which is a tire with increased flexibility or “IF” technology allowing further reduction in tire pressure, shows an increase in the footprint length by 33 per cent compared to image A. This is significant in terms of the things we are interested in; reduced compaction, increased fuel efficiency, decreased tire wear. It is important to recognize that these lower tire pressures may not be safe on the road, and may void your tire warranty.

A median tire pressure, such as in image B is sometimes considered a trade-off air pressure. The trade-off is a lose-lose situation. Based on the work by Matthias Stettler of Switzerland and others, it is thought that the common target weight of a maximum of 10 tonnes/axle of implement is too high. The targets should be maximum five tonnes/axle and tire pressures not exceeding 15 psi. Trying to find a compromise gets you nothing. In the field this increases fuel use, does not significantly reduce the compaction potential and reduces equipment efficiency.

Some tire manufacturers have come up with tire charts that separate out road and field operations and what the appropriate tire pressures are, such as the chart from Michelin (below).

Note how the settings are based on a combination of load and speed. As an example, if a farmer has an axle weight of about 6000 lbs and wants to run on the road at 65 km/h but the field operation is at 9.5 km/h, then this tire is warrantied for 20 psi on the road (A) but down to 12 psi in the field (B). In this example that is a 40 per cent reduction in tire pressure, which will significantly reduce the possibility for soil compaction under wet soil conditions.

There are a significant number of implements being purchased with bias tires. If axle weight exceeds five tonne/axle on these types of implements, the preferred choice would be radial tires. Forage equipment is one of the worst culprits for commonly using bias tires. People don’t think about compaction on perennial stands of forage but it can be very problematic.

As farmers have a greater awareness of the impacts of soil compaction, they are demanding more from their equipment.

We need to encourage equipment companies to develop designs that allow more rubber to be placed under these ever increasing sized implements.

Farmers who adopt better tires and CTIS systems will find the investment worth it over the long term.

– Ian McDonald is a crop innovations specialist with OMAFRA, and Alex Barrie is a soil management engineer with OMAFRA. This article first appeared at fieldcropnews.com.

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