Farming is a dangerous business that can change in the blink of an eye. Mike Bertram, the superintendent of the Arlington Research Station, and Michael Peters, the director of the research stations, saw this aspect of farming firsthand with fires at each station.
Arlington Research Station
“It was a sunny, windy day, when one of our employees who was cutting hay saw smoke coming from about a mile away and saw that it was a shed that had around 700 bales and a lot of equipment,” explained Bertram. “It appeared to have started on the side where there were a couple trucks parked, which then caught the bales and engulfed the whole shed.”
After this fire in 2022 they had to start the process of replacing equipment and rebuilding the 12,000 square foot shed. Bertram explained they started by taking an account of everything that was in the shed. Then they replaced or borrowed equipment that was necessary right away. Replacing all the equipment took about a year. The shed took closer to 18 months said Bertram.
West Madison Research Station
“The cause of origin for the fire was the straw that we had just put into the shed,” explained Peters. “We had just put the bale in the shed and within 10 minutes for some reason it erupted into flames. We lost lots of tractors, and a lot of plot and planting equipment.”
Michael Peters said that they were able to learn a lot about how to deal with this situation from the Arlington station fire from 2 years ago. This will help them speed up the process of replacing equipment. Having gone through this process before is allowing them to be able to prepare for what the insurance company needs.
Advice To Farmers
The advice both Bertram and Peters gave is to have an inventory on what you have. Make sure you know the hours on the tractors and how much of everything you have. This will help give you the true value of what you have to help with the insurance. They also said to be strategic with when you replace what you lost. They explained that you should replace what is needed immediately and wait to replace what won’t be needed right away.
