"If I was going to die here I was going to put up a fight, and that's basically what I did," Sampson Parker told a local reporter.

Parker had noticed a corn stalk stuck in a picker, but when he attempted to remove it, the machine caught his glove, pulling his hand into a mechanical roller.

"The more I tried pulling my hand out, the farther up my hand went," he said. The farmer used a metal rod to stop the machine, and spent the next hour on his knees calling for help with his hand still trapped in the machine.

With no help forthcoming the farmer decided to cut off his fingers with his knife, but as he began cutting a spark from the metal rod caused the machine to catch fire.

Parker found himself trapped, kneeling on the ground with one hand in the machine and the other fending off the flames spreading in the grass.

"My skin was melting. It was dripping off my arm like plastic, plastic melting. I realised I was in trouble," he said.

He picked up his knife once more. "And I just jammed it into my arm, just like that, just started cutting away from the bone," he said.

Once he was free he drove to his home, where a passing firefighter came to his aid, wrapping his severed arm and calling for assistance.

Parker has since managed to put the incident behind him. "[I] came down here, had a prayer with God and the corn picker and me. Made it easier. Made peace with it," he said.