Ben Wundersitz from Maitland. We trade as Anna Binna. I'm a fifth generation
farmer and we mainly focus in the production of lentils, wheat and barley
with a bit of canola. We've had a big focus on harvest fires. We've been
growing lentils as I said for about 20 years now so we've had to be really
proactive in managing that fire risk during harvest. We focused
on anywhere that's hot in the machines, we started covering the
manifolds with materials such as Fiberfrax initially. Later on we moved on to
ceramic coating. Beyond that we looked at the air intakes and now you're seeing a
lot of modifications around covering those air intakes to try and
stop the dust actually entering the engine bay. Some machinery manufacturers
have now completely removed the cooling package out of the engine bay so you're
not continually sucking dust through those those hot areas. We've been working
with our local dealers over the years and some of them have got really
good at supporting growers in modifying the machines to make sure they're the
best they can be. We've had a big focus on - if we have an incident - to try and
keep it in the paddock. We've put a couple of extra water extinguishers on
the headers, we now have fire units on the pickup bins. It's a pretty simple system -
they can just start the pump and it's got a fixed nozzle and they might
be able to drive around a smoulder. We've also got hoses on the on the pickup bins.
Beyond that we've got a couple of our own ex-CFS trucks and we've put 6000-litre
tanks in them. In the last few years after some serious incidents we've
now started putting proper fire protection clothing in our fire trucks
and we also have fire blankets if we get in a position on in a fire that we get
uncomfortable we just know that our people are protected the best they can be.
We've made it standard practice that we
blow down the machines every night. We have diesel compressors mounted on our
comb trailers so they're they're nice and close to where we're working
in conditions particularly in lentils where we feel there's a higher
risk, we'll blow those machines down as often as every couple of hours. One of
the simplest things we've found is really setting up the paddocks. We blow
off the headers normally before we start a new field and then just harvest three
laps around the paddock so we've got a 40 meter area around the field that's
got a very low fuel level and, where we can, we aim to harvest into the wind so if
there's anything coming off the machines it lands on land that's been harvested.
Around all the paddocks we farm we generally have a 2.5-metre
sprayed fire break and then we also spray the fence line. In South
Australia we have a Harvest Code of Practice where when the fire danger
index - or FDI as we call it - reaches 35 we must cease harvesting. The big question
is when does it get to 35? Now we've got weather stations on four of our
properties, we often share the cost of them with neighbours, but it provides the
FDI direct to your phone so we can track it as we're harvesting and then we can
make really informed decisions on when we need to pull up. We find infrared
temperature guns are great for monitoring around the machines,
especially in the engine bay where we're looking for high temperatures. Now we've
actually set some company policy on if we pull up our machines because we've
exceeded the FDI, we try and get the machines in the corner of a paddock or
potentially even in the yard just so in the event of a fire that we don't lose
all our machinery. We obviously have a big focus on protecting our people. We
now even look on those extreme days perhaps at leaving one of our fire
units at home just to protect our home base where we have our house and our
sheds and most of our machines. We also review our insurance every year pre-
harvest and just look at a lot of those assets like fencing and shedding that
you often don't value but if you lose them, ultimately they have to be replaced.