EVERYDAY DANGERS: FARMING RISKS ARE PART OF THE TERRITORY

GORDONVILLE -- On the wall in the machine shop on John Lorberg's farm, opposite the computer screen registering satellite-fed up-to-the-minute crop prices, resides a placard that reads: "Farming could be dangerous to your wealth."

That farming could be dangerous to farmers' health is a given.

The danger to a farmer's wealth is bad enough. A mere one-penny dip in the price of corn could cost Lorberg $600 this year. Any trouble getting his crops in because of mechanical failures or weather could also be costly.

But there's no cost comparable to that paid last year by a Perryville-area family whose teen-age son suffocated in a grain bin accident.

Between 1986 and 1990, 26 Southeast Missouri farmers lost their lives in farm accidents. Most involved overturning tractors.

Last year, farming edged out mining for the title of most dangerous occupation in the U.S. Farming deaths numbered 44 per 100,000 workers.

Some experts say even these numbers are inaccurately low because workplace statistics don't include the under 14- and over 65-year-old workers common on farms.

Practically every day can be dangerous on a farm. Cutting machinery, grain bins and the clothing-grabbing power take-off shafts that drive many pieces of farm equipment are only the most obvious threats.

Add the pesticides that have become almost essential to the farm business and you have a family living in the middle of occupational hazards.

Lorberg was in the midst of bringing in the biggest harvest in his 32 years of farming, an anticipated 60,000 bushels of corn, and he was trying to finish the job before the perfect weather broke (It did the following day.).

"I'm under a little stress now," he said. "I want to get it done."

But he knows that harvest and planting times are the most dangerous for farmers and their laborers. On this farm, the paid laborers include Lorberg's 28-year-old son Jeff.

"We're very safety conscious," Lorberg said. "Almost every day I say, `Boys, take your time. Don't get in a hurry. Just take your good old time.'"

The 55-year-old Gordonville native counts it miraculous that he has never been seriously injured at work. "The good Lord has been with me; I've never had a broken bone or a stitch."

The corn header attachment to his 14-year-old combine is a nasty-looking pronged affair. And looks are not deceiving. "People get their hands caught in them when the corn gets balled up in there," Lorberg said.

Working under the header also is dangerous. If one of the hydraulic lines bursts the whole header can fall down.

The cardinal rule for farmers is: Don't do anything while the machinery is running. Of course, nobody's looking over the farmer's shoulder to make sure the rule is obeyed.

The day before, Lorberg embarrassingly admitted, he fell flat on his back when he missed a step climbing down from the combine. It was running at the time. Fortunately, he fell clear of the machinery.

As family farms increasingly invest in high-tech production approaches to remain competitive, their downsides are becoming better known.

This year for the first time, Lorberg sprayed an insecticide to fight alfalfa weevils. Usually, infestations don't just disappear. "I'm sure that's going to be a common practice," he said.

As a member of the New Trends Planning Committee sponsored by the University of Missouri Extension Service, he looks forward to learning about impending stricter regulations for applying pesticides (see accompanying story).

He acknowledges that farmers may not like them.

"Maybe you don't want to know," he said, "but you've got to know."

Lorberg doesn't raise livestock. He spends his winters working on his combines and tractors. "I can't afford one of those (new) $100,000 machines," he said.

But working with older, cranky equipment carries its own risks. "You get aggravated when you get in there (to fix them) sometimes," he said. "Those older machines just don't work as well as the newer ones."

Lorberg farms acreage near Gordonville and near Whitewater. Five hundred acres are in corn, another 125 rotate wheat and soybeans, and 40 acres are in alfalfa.

He graduated from Southeast Missouri State University in 1960 with a teaching degree but immediately joined his brother Jerry in working the family farm near Gordonville. The farm has been in the family some 100 years.

Ten years ago Lorberg left the partnership to go it alone on another farm his father bought in 1945.

He says the dangers he and his farm crew encounter don't really impinge upon his wife, Ellen, and their 16-year-old daughter Sarah, neither of whom works in the fields.

But he keeps a close eye on his 5-year-old grandson Tyler, who lives on the farm.

He's well aware that two Cape countians have died in grain bin accidents over the past 20 years. He knows what happened to nearby farmers when rotary cutters overturned on hillsides. He points in the direction of two farms only a few miles away where the owners have tangled with PTO shafts.

Both Lorberg and his son have barely avoided accidents while driving machinery along farm-to-market roads. "The shoulder is not wide enough to travel with equipment," Jeff said. "A lot of times I will take a county road instead, just to avoid the traffic."

Farming is risky business, but not without rewards. This year, Lorberg planted some of his corn in 19-inch rows instead of the standard 30-inch width. It's an experiment that has paid off with a 15 percent increase in yield in other locales.

That day the computer screen said corn was selling for $2.07 cents a bushel in Caruthersville. Even though an abundance of corn is depressing the price, Lorberg could have a very good year.

"I believe we'll get close to 150 bushels per acre this year," he said. "That's the best corn I've ever had in my life."

When it comes to accidents, the best he or any farmer can say is: "I've had some close calls. We've sure been lucky."