Grains of Knowledge

Day in the Life of Risk Control

Last month I had the pleasure of spending time with one of our senior risk control field representatives, Brian Musser, who has the very important job of providing safety, service and security to our customers, agents and employees.

Spending time in a bio-hazard suit and the smell of poultry buildings brings out the best in anyone, so I choose to interview my partner for the day.  I was pleased and wanted to share his story with others.

Question:  Tell me about your job and what you do all day?

Answer:  My role with Westfield working in risk control is to help the team write quality risk, reduce losses, improve employee work place safety, save lives from farm machinery hazards and workplace hazards, provide safety service to our customers for farms and/or commercial risks, identify safety hazards on farms and commercial risks, electrical, heating, construction, etc.   I conduct collapse inspections of roof truss areas on large livestock confinement buildings like hog, poultry and dairy complex's. Farmers will call me and I will come out to the farm to survey a new livestock building under construction to see if electrical, heat, construction and roof trusses meet our safety & collapse guidelines and local building codes.  I take pride in knowing if I helped save a person's life and improved workplace safety.

Question:  What do you enjoy most about your job?

Answer:  What I love most about my job is to help our customers operate a safe work place either on a farm or a commercial business such as a concrete contractor. Most important to me is really #1 to help save a life or injury to workers on farms or commercial risks.

Question:  What do you want people to know about your job?

Answer:  What I want customers to know about my role is I am here to help them anyway possible by providing them safety surveys and provide them with safety resources and information to help them operate a more profitable business and reduce work place injuries, prevent death of workers and loss of property.

Question:  Please share a fond memory.

Answer:  My most memorable farm experience was spending good times with my grandfather feeding cattle, hogs and planting / harvesting corn. I have learned a lot about farming from my grandfather who lived to 94 years old, the hardest working man I knew!

Thank you Brian and all the members of our Risk Control team for all the hard work done every day!

Cow manure - powering a computer near you?

Researchers at Hewlett Packard recently released a research paper that outlines the design for a computer data center to run primarily on energy generated from digested farm waste. HP researchers used a hypothetical 10,000 cow dairy farm could power a 1 MW data center.  The relationship between Dairy Farm and HP Data Center creates a Farm Waste Data Center Ecosystem. 

 

Source: Flickr

 

Over the past year, we have seen greater interest in many potential on-farm power generation projects, including anaerobic digestion.  We have insured these systems for several years, but they were primarily used for generating power primarily used on the farm.  With the availability of various government incentives, there has been greater interest in constructing methane digesters on hog and dairy farms for power generation.  This potential model from HP has created an entirely new opportunity for agriculture. 

 

The alignment of livestock agriculture and a technology firm may seem like a stretch, but the HP researchers describe the potential benefits to both the farm operation and the data center provider.  In order to lower operating costs, most data centers are co-locate power generation equipment and resources to cool the computer equipment.  Partnering a dairy farm with a data center, provides the ideal situation with a co-located power generation source and cooling resource.   The methane digester would supply the power and heat from the data center can be further used in the anaerobic digestion process. 

 

A copy of the research paper, Design of Farm Waste-Driven Supply Side Infrastructure for Data Centers, and other supporting information can be found on the Hewlett-Packard website.  The researchers concluded the paper by indicating that a future financial analysis will be completed.   On the surface, a technology company and a dairy farm seem like unlikely partners.   What a development if we can see this type of relationship develop between technology and agriculture. 

 

As with any major project, methane digesters and other alternative energy exposures increase your overall risk.  Although this technology as been developed for some time, the number of projects in the U.S. continues to grow.  Westfield has partnered with various firms to increase our understanding of the exposures created by these operations and we can share this insight with our agents and insureds.  If you are considering a methane digester project or any other major expansion, please discuss with your agent and insurance carrier.  The initial input can be valuable to your long term success.   

 

Craig Welsh is the Agribusiness Division Leader at Westfield Insurance.  You can connect with Craig on Twitter @cdwelsh and on Linked In @ Craig Welsh

Spontaneous Combustion of Hay Stacks

 
Source: Flickr 

As I made the trek into work this morning, I couldn't help but notice the neatly raked windrows of freshly mown hay as I attempted to see through the raindrops on my windshield.  My mind naturally drifted to the fact that although the weather forecast was calling for mostly cloudy skies today, it looks like rain for the weekend - while my family should luck out this time around as we're making second cutting haylage today (which can withstand a higher moisture content), others in our area are likely to be baling and could be setting themselves up for a possible hay fire if not careful. 

The necessary precautions are well documented to mitigate spontaneous combustion of baled hay, however we can all probably think of a friend or neighbor whose recently baled hay has either smoldered or caught fire.  Hopefully, these incidences didn't escalate into a barn going up in flames, loss of equipment or livestock or even worse death of a loved one, but I thought it was worthwhile to offer this blog post as a reminder as we're currently dealing with wet conditions.

Not only does baling hay at moisture levels increase it's chances for spontaneous combustion, but it also increases the potential for molds and reduces the overall quality of the forage.  For additional information on how the quality can be compromised, check out this article by Lester R Vough of University of Maryland titled Causes and Prevention of Spontaneous Combustion in Hay.

After baling, you should regularly check the temperature of your stacks and use the following guidelines:

• 150 Degrees F is the beginning of the danger zone - after this point check temperature daily
• 160 Degrees F is dangerous - Measure temperature every four hours and visually inspect the stack
• 175 Degrees F is when you should call the fire department. While waiting for their arrival, spray the hay with water and remove it from the barn or dismantle the stack away from buildings and other dry hay
• 185 Degrees F is when hot spots and pockets should be inspected in the stack.  Flames will likely develop when heating hay comes into contact with the air (pockets may have already burnt our under the hay's surface - do not attempt to walk across the top of the pile, it could collapse)
• 212 Degrees F is critical! Temperatures rise rapidly above this point and the hay will almost certainly ignite

The temperature guidelines came from William Woodward of Washington State University, to learn more check out this article titled Spontaneous Combustion in Hay Stacks.

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Article written by Kristin Taylor who is a farm and commercial agribusiness underwriter with the Western Region of Westfield’s AgriBusiness Division. She is located at the company’s headquarters in Westfield Center, Ohio and holds an underwriting responsibility for the states of Illinois and Iowa.

She is a graduate of Ashland University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in communications, specializing in English and journalism.

Kristin’s love of agriculture is strongly tied to her experience growing up on her family’s registered Jersey farm in north-central Ohio. Her posts focus on the dairy industry perspectives and Westfield’s rich history in farming and agribusiness insurance.

Farm Succession Planning

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Earlier this year, I attended a Farm Succession Planning seminar offered by Braintree Business Development Center and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center where I learned some of the foundations regarding estate planning. 

A basic succession plan should include goals of the owner and other key groups, a plan to meet these goals and details on how they will be implemented and managed.  Creating a well thought out plan will help to ensure an orderly transfer of the operating entity to new ownership, manage the impact of estate and other taxes, identify risks of the transfer and develop plans to mitigate these risk as well as developing a realistic value of the operation and real estate.  Some potential issues that can be caused by not developing a succession plan include a reduced value of the operation, limited options of potential suitors and/or methods of sale, higher effective tax rates for the seller, loss of control and a burden on surviving family members in case of death.  While the father in the photo above is not likely discussing succession of the family farm with his toddler, it was noted at the seminar that the best succession plans are laid out at least ten years before the transfer of ownership is set take place.

General outline for succession planning:

• Goal setting for the farmer / owner - include goals around income, legacy and control
• Goal setting for the stakeholders - include operation viability, children who left the farm and employees’ job security
• Farm management succession - ensure that stakeholders are capable of managing the operation and that they have the desire to continue, ensure the operation has economic viability, plan to cede control over time (can coincide with payments to the from the stakeholder to the owner)
• Identify a best case scenario and explore all other options, including a worst case scenario
• Develop a written plan (which can include buy/sell agreements, trusts, life insurance, etc)
• Implement the plan

Succession planning conversations can be difficult as they should include the topics of life changes, mortality and family relationships.  Not only can the discussions be tough, but some seasoned farm owners also fail to plan because of a perceived loss of control, they're too busy and plan to get to it later, they can't envision doing anything else (even retiring!), planning is too expensive, they expect that their children will just take over the operation and others believe they are invincible.

Stay tuned for an upcoming post, which will dig a little deeper into buy/sell agreements, trusts and life insurance.

Article written by Kristin Taylor.   Kristin is a farm and commercial agribusiness underwriter with the Western Region of Westfield’s AgriBusiness Division. She is located at the company’s headquarters in Westfield Center, Ohio and holds an underwriting responsibility for the states of Illinois and Iowa.

She is a graduate of Ashland University, where she received a Bachelor of Arts in communications, specializing in English and journalism.

Kristin’s love of agriculture is strongly tied to her experience growing up on her family’s registered Jersey farm in north-central Ohio. Her posts focus on the dairy industry perspectives and Westfield’s rich history in farming and agribusiness insurance.