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When her eleven-year-old son, Keith, suffocated in a gravity flow wagon under thousands of pounds of shelled corn, Marilyn Adams overcame her profound grief and set out on a mission to raise awareness in communities throughout the country about the dangers posed to children on family farms. In 1987, only a year after her son's death, she founded Farm Safety 4 Just Kids, a nonprofit organization that promotes safe farm environments to prevent health hazards, injuries, and fatalities to children.

According to the Department of Labor, farm accidents claimed the lives of as many as three hundred children in 1990. A report by the National Safety Council found that children between the ages of five and fourteen were two-thirds more likely to be injured in a farm accident than adults ages forty-five to sixty-four. As one researcher has noted, part of the reason for this lies in the fact that a "common assumption is made that when a child looks large enough to reach the pedals, operate the equipment, or handle the livestock, he or she is ready to perform that particular chore." Often a child’s developmental stage is not reflected in their physical body size. Children are also especially susceptible to accidents because of a lack of experience handling the often highly dangerous equipment that is used in modern farming.

But, in part as a result of the efforts of Farm Safety 4 Just Kids, and its more than two thousand members across rural North America, farm-related fatalities among children in the United States have dropped to about one hundred deaths annually. Though it is still a number that Marilyn Adams refuses to accept, the rate of fatal injuries among children has declined from what it was at the time of her own son’s death. "We just didn’t know the dangers of gravity flow wagons," Marilyn says of her son’s accident. Today, with Marilyn's help, other farm families have access to resources and educational materials apprising them of the variety of dangers that children can encounter on farms, and information about how to avoid them. Farm Safety 4 Just Kids now has 139 chapters throughout North America.

Marilyn has spread her message of farm safety through her visits to rural schools, media appearances, testimony before various government agencies and in Congress, and her writings. Clearly, she is making a difference.

To learn more about Marilyn Adams and her cause, and how you can make a difference, please visit: www.fs4jk.org.

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