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Tractors can kill. Farm safety for teens can save lives.

Spend a little time with Ellen Duysen, and you’ll hear about the 7-year-old in South Dakota who suffocated in a grain wagon, the 14-year-old in Iowa who was killed when his family was changing a tractor wheel, or the gas can explosion in the same state that killed an 11-year-old.

Tragedies can happen in an instant, whether it’s a tractor hitting a hidden prairie dog hole or a farmer taking a moment to pick sweet corn and forgetting to set the parking brake.

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About every three days, a child in the United States dies from an agriculture-related injury. One expert is cultivating lifesaving skills among teen farmers.

“Oh my gosh, you can become so saddened by the statistics,” Ms. Duysen says. “When you hear about these young farmers dying, it becomes a passion to keep them safe and healthy.”

Ms. Duysen is the sneakers-on-the-ground expert educating farmers in seven states across the Midwest and the Great Plains. As outreach coordinator for the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health in Omaha, Nebraska, she aims to cajole and inspire young farmers to embrace a “culture of safety” to protect them from the myriad hazards claiming the lives of far too many of their peers. 

Ellen Duysen has driven 470 miles across Nebraska to get here, her windshield streaked with bugs. Her task: to impart safety lessons to a group of 14-year-old farmers in the state’s far west corner.

As outreach coordinator for the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health in Omaha, Ms. Duysen aims to cajole and inspire young farmers to embrace a “culture of safety” to protect them from the myriad hazards claiming the lives of far too many of their peers. 

“What are you doing for fun this summer?” Ms. Duysen asks the five teenagers assembled at the Legacy of the Plains Museum in Gering, situated amid a landscape of buttes and two-lane roads.   

Why We Wrote This

A story focused on

About every three days, a child in the United States dies from an agriculture-related injury. One expert is cultivating lifesaving skills among teen farmers.

“Raising show pigs,” 14-year-old Trey Carter pipes up. 

“They’re naughty, aren’t they?” says Ms. Duysen, who has raised pigs herself and whose easygoing manner helps build rapport with the teens before she begins discussing the perils of farmwork.

Tragic statistics

About every three days, a child in the United States dies from an agriculture-related injury, and the agricultural sector leads the nation in the number of occupational fatalities for youths 17 and under, according to the National Children’s Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety. Youths under age 16 have 12 times the risk of injuries involving all-terrain vehicles compared with adults, with some 300 children dying each year. Tractor accidents are the leading cause of death on farms, with roughly half of the vehicles lacking safety devices designed to prevent potentially fatal rollovers. 

Patricia Leigh Brown

Ellen Duysen is outreach coordinator for the Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health in Omaha.

Ms. Duysen is the sneakers-on-the-ground expert educating farmers in seven states across the Midwest and the Great Plains. She is often accompanied by Pat, a male mannequin that she calls “gorgeous” and “delightful” and that helps her demonstrate personal protective equipment (PPE). Her home base at the University of Nebraska Medical Center is one of 12 centers around the country established by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), a branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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