Agricultural tractor moving on the asphalt road after working in field.

Farmers are reminded to stay safe and healthy this harvest season during Iowa Farm Safety and Health Week. This year’s theme is “Every Farmer Counts,” acknowledging, celebrating, and uplifting Iowa’s farmers during these difficult times. With the harvest season approaching, farmers are facing many challenges, including the COVID-19 pandemic, drought conditions, and the aftermath of the powerful August derecho that flattened crops.

Iowa State University professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering Charles Schwab explains how these events could cause heightened stress among farmers as harvest begins, “When you put all those together it really is a tremendous stressor for the individual. Every choice that you make has some type of safety ramifications and it’s those stressors of worrying about trying to get the crop in or even harvesting some of it because of the downed corn because of the derecho, the drought conditions maybe diminishing the types of yields that response that we are going to have, all those influence our mental state and that changes how we think about things. It weakens our critical thinking skills and puts you potentially into hazardous choices that you make, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid is those hazardous choices.” Schwab reminds farmers to use tractors with rollover protective structures, be mindful of their personal health and safety, and be aware of potential road hazards when traveling on highways.