I recently took a group of students on a tour of several area agricultural destinations, including a couple of farms, a nursery and a sawmill. It was a chance for students to learn about Randolph County agriculture and for the farmers and other individuals to pass on words of advice and bits of knowledge to students.
Thomas Lawrence of Seagrove made one particular point. He pointed his finger is no particular direction and said that this was his biggest problem. It took a while for me to understand what he meant, supporting his point: Many people do not understand or are not readily familiar with drivers’ hand signals.
Sometimes when a farmer points a finger to the left to indicate that he or she intends to turn left, a driver will go around the tractor or combine, thinking that the farmer is signaling for the driver to go ahead and pass the piece of equipment. This is an understandable mistake for those who are not very familiar with hand signals, but it can have fatal consequences. On a combine, farmers might not be able to see or hear something coming up behind them. If they turn left, after indicating their intent, and a car or truck tries to pass on the left, a deadly crash can result. This isn’t just a problem with left turns – someone passing on the right shoulder when a farmer is trying to turn right can have the same result.
In case you’ve forgotten some of those lessons learned in drivers ed, a straight arm pointed to the left indicates an intent to turn left. A bent left arm, with a hand held toward the sky, means that one plans to turn right. A bent arm with a hand pointed downward means that one intends to stop. Mr. Lawrence would like for drivers education teachers to put more emphasis on these signals.
Untimely passing is not the only problem that farmers experience on the road. As you may recall, one of our Randolph County farmers died earlier this year after a vehicle hit him from the rear, as he was simply driving east on U.S. 64. Mr. Lawrence told of a farmer who ended up with thousands of dollars of damage to his combine after running off the road to avoid having the header of his combine hit by an oncoming car. Another farmer had a driver drive right up under a combine header, decapitating the driver.
If you are inclined to get annoyed by farm equipment on the road, keep in mind that the farmer probably would rather not be there, either. However, moving from one field to another sometimes necessitates road use. As I told one of my friends, if you like to eat, respect the farmer!
Randolph Agriculture
I gave the students some facts and figures about Randolph County agriculture and thought that you might be interested in such information as well. According to the 2007 Census of Agriculture, Randolph County farmers sold approximately $206 million of agricultural products. The largest contributor to this amount was the combination of poultry and eggs, which brought in $159 million alone. Dairy products came in at a distant second, with $14 million in sales, and we ranked second in the state for sales in this category. We also ranked second in the state for the number of cattle and calves on area farms, and these brought in $11 million. Our top horticultural money-earner was the “(n)ursery, greenhouse, floriculture, and sod” group, with $4.7 million in sales. “Grains, oilseeds, dry beans, and dry peas” brought in $3.3 million, surpassing tobacco’s $2.2 million. As at least one student learned for the first time, a lot of agricultural production goes on in Randolph County!
Mary Helen Ferguson is a horticulture agent with the Randolph County Center of the N.C. Cooperative Extension Service in Asheboro. She can be reached at (336) 318-6000 or by e-mail at maryhelen_ferguson@ncsu.
