Dr Sarah Taber

Combines are rolling fire traps. They have to be carefully maintained so they DON'T spontaneously ignite. They can start fires in a lot of ways, even when they're not operating: just sitting there in a field!

-Dried-up bits of crop gets lodged inside in contact with hot engine parts &/or exposed wiring -(There shouldn't BE exposed wiring. But if you don't clean out your combine regularly, it turns into a rodent playground & they chew up your wires. see @woofpickle's entire feed lol)

-Tire friction can create static. (This is the same thing that happens with cars & can sometimes cause sparks -> explosions at gas stations). Combines are supposed to have a chain dragging on the ground to, well, ground the combine. But if the chain snaps/falls off? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What's going on here looks an awful lot like insurance fraud. If you can set a narrative that your dipshit accident was actually arson, it can help your insurance payout and/or future premiums. Farmers do this ALL THE TIME. Insurance fraud is a way of life LOL

Don't believe me? Read "Heartl*nd" by Sarah Sm*rsh, noted purveyor of farmer respectability, carefully. She details exactly how her family ran an insurance fraud to get extra payouts for an "accidental" fire that they lit themselves. Like, she lays it right out. It's a thing.

There's a combined sense in farm country of "we're the biggest victims in the world" & also that the public that buys food are not so much customers, as we are marks to be played. NYT fell right into it lmaoooooo Beautiful fraud assist there, NYT. Beautiful.

Not only does this family have insurance to cover their losses, like any business does they've also raised $132K on their gofundme when, again, this situation has a lot of red flags for fraud.

This is exactly why the farmer-as-victim narrative is so important to the farm community. It gets them BIG MONEY. It gets them sympathetic coverage in the New York Times, bc the NYT really wants farmers to think it's cool for some misbegotten reason.

It's also led to the last 3 years having the highest profits in US farm history while the rest of America drifts deeper & deeper into hunger & food insecurity. Because nearly all the funding for the food system goes straight to farmers, & NONE to the hungry themselves.

The US farm economy is fraud all the way down and well-meaning but absolutely ignorant, bleeding-heart coverage like this is a big part of why.

Had this article actually TALKED to any Nebraska antifa they would have been able to come up with an interesting counterfactual.

IME Nebraska far-leftists are so far up farmers' ass that if you're a farmworker who dares talk openly about experiences getting harangued, financially screwed, & outright physically harmed by farmers they actually yell at you for being an "condescending urban asshole" lmaooo

In closing: Major press outlets, for the love of god, if you're going to write on farm country you better hire people who know what they're looking at. Here are some suggestions! @sarah_k_mock @the_meat_lady @MegRaeB @SylvanaquaFarms @apihtawikosisan @_beccaharrison

Getting farmers in the replies w their buns chapped about "don't u know the engine's way off the ground" If y'all are out there driving combines you oughta know the engine's not the only hot spot. Got moving parts/friction & static discharge elsewhere.https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1323297147266256896 …

Not to mention chaff can still get caught up around the engine & start fires. And once the combine's on fire it spreads to the rest of the parked equipment via the stubble. "But but but the engine's all the way up thur" isn't the own you think it is

don't stop a few lil facts from blowing up your fun tho boys this is just like that time when ag twitter yelled "IT'S COW BURPS NOT FARTS" for 3 days straight & everyone really got so flustered that they stopped talking about cattle & climate change

I like to imagine 100% of those guys were planning to torch their own combines for insurance after harvest & now they're mad that they need a new cover story