Grape harvest safety seminar planned
With the grape harvest season just around the corner, the Lodi District Grape Growers Association is hosting a grape harvest safety seminar to educate and prepare local growers and employees for the upcoming season.
The seminar will be held Tuesday at 8 a.m. at the Lodi Grape Festival grounds, and there will be sessions in English and Spanish. The Spanish session will be held in Jackson Hall while the English session will be held in Burgundy Hall.
Free doughnuts and coffee will be served in the morning and a complimentary lunch will be served in Jackson Hall following the seminar. The event is free and open to any grape grower or employee of a grape grower wishing to learn more about harvest safety.
According to Lodi Grape Growers Association Executive Director Amy Blagg, the seminar is held annually right before harvest season.
The seminar will include discussions about general harvest safety as well as safety issues that are unique to growers in the Lodi area, Blagg said. Speakers for the seminar include Daniel Castillo from Pan American, Oscar Fierros from Cal Ag Safety, a representative from Ag Safe and Santos Gomez from Cal Ag Safety. During the seminar the speakers will educate those in attendance on heat Illness prevention and top OSHA violations, night harvest safety and grape harvest safety.
One of the biggest safety issues that will be addressed is on-road safety at night, Blagg said.
“That not only involves the agricultural workers but it involves the people in our community and making sure people recognize when they see a group of harvesters or tractor trailers moving down the road, to take their time and be safe,” Blagg said.
In recent years, there have been a few traffic incidents and collisions in relation to moving harvest equipment on the road at night, Blagg said.
“We just want to make sure that the employees are safe as well as our community in general,” Blagg said. “We want to make sure people take their time and realize that sometimes it may look like there’s only one or two tractors in front of you, but there may actually be three, four or five.”
In order to promote safe night harvesting, Blagg said some growers require their employees to wear head lamps and reflective safety vests.
During the grape harvest, most work involving machinery is done at night, Blagg said. However, hand-harvested grapes are harvested during the day and crews start early in the morning. For those individuals, Blagg said OSHA has very specific regulations when it comes to working in the heat and the seminar will bring those in attendance up to date on heat illness standards, requirements and prevention.
On hot days, Blagg said it’s imperative for growers to have plenty of water available to all employees at all times, allow for breaks in the shade and make sure all employees are trained to know the signs of heat illness and what actions to take during an emergency.
While there have been incidents in the past in which individuals at local vineyards have been injured or suffered from heat illness, Blagg said the main goal of the seminar is to make sure people are as prepared as possible to avoid such incidents in the future.