MANKATO (AP) — Michele Gran can clearly remember telling her son not to go to work on Aug. 14 of last year.

Landon Gran, 18, suffered a sore back from farm work at a nearby operation two miles south of the Gransí farm in rural Norseland. Michele had wanted her oldest child to take a break, maybe visit a chiropractor, but Landon had told her he would stop by his employer just to see if they needed any help.

What happened after that is a little unclear, according to Michele.

They know Landon was cleaning out a grain bin almost empty of corn. They know he got his legs stuck in a sweep auger, a piece of equipment at the bottom of a grain bin resembling a really long drill turned on its side that pushes grain through to a dispenser. And they know Landon must have spent hours inside that bin, bleeding to death, before he was found.

“He was ground up,” Michele said, crying. “I’m just saying it bluntly. This was a gear-driven auger which wrapped him right into it. How long our son sat there crying for help, for hours, we don’t know.”

Landon’s death is one of at least eight grain bin-related fatalities in Minnesota since June. It’s an unusually high number in such a short period of time, and the recent spate of deaths is causing lawmakers to pay attention, the Mankato Free Press reported.

“It’s unfair that my child had to suffer through that, that my family is suffering now because he’s gone,” she said.

It’s no secret farming is dangerous work. Farm workers are 800% more likely to die on the job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The majority of farm-related fatalities are due to tractor rollovers, not grain bins.

Yet grain bins have long posed a hazard to farmers, especially as many farms are growing and storing more and more corn and soybeans during the past few decades. And experts see grain bin-related deaths as entirely preventable.

Any farmer worth his or her salt knows a worker is never supposed to go into a grain bin. But some do anyway — to clean caked-on grain, or dislodge a potential plug in the storage system.