Follow the Yellow Book...

Greg Pierre and Rosemary Courington with recently completed Yellow Book.

Just what is the “Yellow Book” that our Accounting Department spends a good part of January and February putting together each year? We sat down with Greg Pierre and Rosemary Courington to find out.

All property and casualty companies fill out a yellow book—Life insurers file a blue book. The Yellow Book is prepared under Statutory Accounting Principles, and is what companies have to file with Insurance Departments. Being an Alabama-based company, American Mining Insurance deals primarily with the Alabama Insurance Department, but also with the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC); however, Alabama law takes precedence. We also deal with each of the states in which we do business. Each year we put together these statements— containing both a balance sheet and income statement of the current year and also showing prior year statements for comparative purposes.

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Farming More Dangerous than Mining in Virginia

Coal mining, logging, and firefighting represent just a handful of the dozens of jobs that spring to mind when it comes to dangerous work.

Farming isn't often one of them.

But data shows agriculture is outpacing mining as the most deadly occupation in the United States, and the trend is thriving in Virginia. Agriculture accounted for 30.1 fatalities per 100,000 workers in the U.S. in 2004, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Virginia's farm-related deaths last year dropped three from the year before, according to Farm Bureau safety manager Bruce Stone.

Still, unofficial records collected by the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation show 15 people died doing farm work last year. In comparison, no coal miners were killed on the job in Virginia during that time. Among the key causes of farm deaths are overturned tractors, according to statistics.

Turnovers accounted for five of last year's fatalities; four people were run over by tractors or other equipment, three were killed by equipment-related injuries, one by road accident and two by unspecified causes. Stone has been compiling an unofficial record of Virginia farm fatalities since 1994. In the years since, about 199 people have died working on Virginia farms.

That includes 83 who died in overturns. The answer, he said, is the use of factory-built roll bars or cages and seat belts. The safeguards offer a 95 percent or higher survival rate should a flip occur, he said.

But about half of Virginia's tractors were manufactured before roll-over protection was available, explained Ron Saacke, who has been working with Stone. Saacke said the Farm Bureau's statistics, which are compiled from news and accident reports, are more accurate than government figures, since not every death may be reported to the government.

Still, he said both entities may not know the true death toll.

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