Two years ago a 14-year-old boy in Genoa, N.Y., stood atop a mound of corn while unloading a tractor-trailer on the family farm. Suddenly the truck's unloading trough opened and he was engulfed by grain, and sank as if in quicksand.

John Ducey, chief of the Genoa Fire Department, recalls that the boy "had swallowed and breathed in corn" and it appeared that "his time was about done." But Ducey's fire department had received specialized agricultural rescue training twice from Cornell University's Farmedic program, part of the Agricultural Health and Safety program in the university's College of Veterinary Medicine. It is the only training course designed for agricultural rescue in the country.

Rescuers from the Genoa Fire Department arrived within minutes and started shoveling the corn to one side. The boy was pulled out, harnessed, placed into a Stokes basket and sped by ambulance to the nearest hospital. Thanks to the firefighters' fast response, the boy lived.

"When people see a farm, it's an idyllic scene with a barn and silo," says Ted Halpin, director of Farmedic, and the former fire chief in Canandaigua, N.Y. But, he says, "These structures house livestock and provide storage for machinery, grain, feed and manure -- and many potential hazards." Farm fatalities and accidents can result from electrocutions, silo fires and explosions, falls from heights, and entrapment in grain, feed, animal waste and machinery, Ducey says.

Four out of 10,000 agricultural workers in the United States are killed each year, while 140,000 accidents happen during the planting and harvest seasons, according to statistics gathered by the University of Iowa. Augers (for moving grain) rank among the most dangerous agricultural equipment, while farm tractors cause the most deaths.

The Farmedic program teaches specific techniques on handling dozens of different accident situations. For example, silo fires can turn into silo explosions if firefighters open a silo air-hatch to pour in water or foam. Two firefighters in Ohio were killed last October when air was introduced into a silo fire, fueling the fire and causing it to explode. "It's imperative for firefighters to know what kind of fire they are fighting," says Halpin.

Power-take-off (PTO) transmissions bring tractor power to farm machinery. Last year, the Genoa Fire Department rescued a farmer whose shirt had been caught in the PTO drive, repeatedly twisting his sleeve into a tourniquet around his arm. Ducey's rescuers removed the farmer from the PTO, and airlifted him to a regional hospital. The farmer's arm was saved.

As a young fire chief Halpin had noticed that many fire and rescue people died while conducting poorly executed rescues. In 1981, the Henrietta, N.Y., Fire District and Halpin's father's John Deere dealership near Rochester, N.Y., hosted the first program to train fire, rescue and emergency medical technicians. From this, Halpin, who grew up on a farm, started Farmedic and developed a training manual and course. In the 1990s, Farmedic was moved to Alfred State College in Alfred, N.Y. The program moved from Alfred to Cornell in 2002. Over 23,000 fire and rescue personnel in the United States and Canada have been trained since 1981.

Farmedic will be holding more than 120 training sessions around the country this year in places as diverse as Wages, Colo., Anderson, S.C., Pike County, Ill., Bowling Green, Ohio, Nestucca, Ore. and Ithaca, N.Y.

Halpin's program works. Around the country, firefighter deaths from agricultural emergencies are down from several years ago. "This type of call can be extremely challenging. Instead of a working in a kitchen, we find ourselves in a silo. Instead of a highway, we're in a muddy field carrying tools to the scene," says Halpin. "We not only need to concern ourselves with the patient, but we must consider hazards that have injured and killed rescuers."