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Despite the dangers, the 17-year-old said he wouldn’t want to pursue any other career.
“There’s nothing that really scares me around the farm,” he said. “There’s nothing that’s going to keep me away from it. It’s just my passion.“
But each year about 30 people are killed on farms in Wisconsin and about 700 are killed nationwide, according to the University of Wisconsin-Extension Center for Agricultural Health and Safety and the National Safety Council.
These statistics have encouraged many organizations across the state and nation to take initiative, trying to educate farmers about safety.
And because farming is a unique industry, there are a lot of safety concerns.
Farming is one of the few industries where children, teens, adults and senior citizens work with heavy equipment, animals and other hazards without safety regulations, said Mark Purschwitz, a research engineer for the National Farm Medicine Center in Marshfield, Wis.
“With other industries, you have regulations for safety,” Purschwitz said. “It’s a complicated situation involving a lot of different factors, and, in this business, it has a lot of hazards.”
Accident was ‘surreal’
Tractors and farm machinery are the most common causes of farm fatalities in Wisconsin, making up more than 60 percent of all deaths. The most common cause, Purschwitz said, is also the most preventable.
About 5 p.m. on a Monday in October 2004, Nachreiner was hauling silage with his brother. With the sky darkening and a slight breeze picking up, Nachreiner didn’t think much about putting on a long-sleeve flannel shirt.
He noticed a part had come loose from the tractor’s power takeoff shaft, and Nachreiner tried to tighten it.
Then something “surreal” happened.
“The wind blew a bit and (the power takeoff) caught my (left) arm and it sucked me in,” he said. “I kind of blacked out for a minute. I looked down and my arm was gone.”
It didn’t stop him, however. Before spring planting, Nachreiner was back on his family’s 250-acre farm near Plain using his prosthetic arm for daily chores.
He still remains enthusiastic about farming, his mother, Vickie Nachreiner said, even as he waits for a new prosthetic arm.
Tractors are the most dangerous piece of machinery, statistics show.
Almost 90 percent of all tractor deaths occur by rollovers, runovers and falls. To prevent these accidents, a rollover protection structure, or ROPS, became a standard on all tractors in 1985, but not a requirement, Purschwitz said.
A ROPS can be part of a cab or simply U-shaped bars on the top of the tractor that prevent it from rolling completely over.
But Purschwitz estimated that about half to two-thirds of the tractors in Wisconsin do not have a ROPS.
“They (deaths) are preventable if you have the money to upgrade your equipment and building,” he said. “Some years, the income is so low, farmers don’t have much money to do much of anything.”
Hazardous business
Farming is one of the three most dangerous industries in the U.S., along with mining and construction, according to the National Safety Center.
On June 28, three Wisconsin residents in Dane, Green and Waupaca counties were killed in farm accidents.
Most of those killed on Wisconsin farms — about 96 percent — are men and about 67 percent of those killed are 45 or older, according to the UW-Extension.
Aging can be a key factor in agricultural deaths and accidents, said Cheryl Skjolaas, the agricultural safety specialist of UW-Extension. Slowed reaction time, hearing loss and other health conditions are some of the many factors, she said.
But still children make up about 15 percent of Wisconsin farm deaths.
Barbara Lee, director of the National Farm Medicine Center, said about 100 children and teenagers younger than 20 are killed each year, while 22,600 are injured on farms nationwide.
These accidents typically happen because some children are not aware of the dangers on farms and because they need supervision when helping out with farm-related work, she said.
It’s difficult to track the number of people injured on Wisconsin farms because the majority of farms are not required to provide workers compensation insurance if they have fewer than six employees — not including family members, Purschwitz said.
That means most non-fatal injuries are not reported, he said.
Nationally, about 120,000 agricultural workers each year suffer disabling injuries from farm accidents, according to the National Safety Council.
Reminders for safety
With most farm deaths labeled as preventable, some organizations are leading educational and equipment efforts to try to save lives.
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health started the National Agricultural Tractor Safety Initiative in 2004. Through it, NIOSH aims to inform the public about farm safety. Other goals include retiring older tractors and replacing them with ROPS-equipped models.
“Safety is always important because it’s a dangerous business, it’s a never-ending problem and farm families always benefit from seeing or hearing reminders,” Purschwitz said.
For the Nachreiner family, Eric Nachreiner serves as their reminder to always be safe around the farm, his mother said. While the family wasn’t careless before, she said they now always make sure equipment isn’t running and never rush through a task.
“If you push, push, push, that’s when accidents happen,” Vickie Nachreiner said. “We made sure to do that, to slow down every day.”
Nearly two years after the accident, Nachreiner said there still are frustrations. His prosthetic arm doesn’t bend in the same places, and that makes two-handed tasks such as milking cows or driving the family’s Bobcat a challenge.
Sometimes it takes a toll on the family to see him struggle, but Vickie Nachreiner said he is the reason they keep the family farm intact.
“This farm here has been in the family for four generations,” she said. “He drives us to keep it going.”
DJ Slater is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal.
