With the average age of the American farmer now over 50 years old according to the Environmental Protection Agency and the family farm on visible life support, the Obama Administration has moved to put the ailing patient out of his misery with a well aimed bullet right between the eyes.
What better way to ensure the complete and utter death of the family farm in just a few short years than to prohibit the children of farm owning parents from working the land and learning the business alongside Mom and Dad?
A proposed new rule from the Obama Administration would ban children under 18 from any farm work which involves the “storing, marketing, and transporting of farm product raw materials.”
A Labor Department press release read that “Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”
In addition, under this proposed rule, independent groups like 4-H would no longer be allowed to teach and certify safety training to children replacing such locally based youth agricultural programs with a 90 hour federal government training course.
Let’s think about this for a moment.
This rule forbids just about every farm chore I can think of right down to coloring a flyer with paper and crayons to decorate the farm’s booth at the local Farmer’s Market.
So, what are farm kids supposed to do then if they can’t do much of anything around the farm until they are 18 which includes running a small business of their own on the farm to generate some income for college?
I guess they can always play video games or watch TV instead. Surely there’s a video game out there where children can simulate farm chores without ever leaving the living room couch!
A generation of farm kids raised on sloth instead of a hard work ethic will undoubtedly ensure that few family farms will make it into the next generation’s hands.
With children not able to be mentored by their parents on the farm nor by other local agricultural leaders in their community via 4-H or FFA, loss of interest in agriculture by the next generation of family farmers is virtually guaranteed.
Wait a minute!
Did you hear something?
Oh, nevermind. It’s just the cha-ching of campaign contributions from Monsanto.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Source:Â Rural Kids, Parents Angry About Labor Department Rule Banning Farm Chores
You all realize that the big agribusiness/ chemical companies and their ties to the FDA are raiding small farms with SWAT team because they have raw milk? Wake up America! Small farmers are under attack.
Dawn, just to repeat: it only exempted kids working on farms owned SOLELY and EXCLUSIVELY by their parents (or on farms on which the child’s own parents were the sole managers of the farm, which means being in charge of the hiring and firing of workers, the making of schedules and job assignments, the actual supervising of work, etc.). If the farm was anything less than 100% owned by the parents — was an LLC, say, or a co-op, or was jointly-owned by, say, the child’s parents and his grandparents, the child was NOT exempt.
Since it’s estimated that only about 30% of the farms on which kids work are owned EXCLUSIVELY by these children’s own parents, that means that had the bill passed, a full two-thirds of all the kids currently being paid for working on family farms — even farms owned mostly, but not exclusively, by their parents — would have become ineligible to continue doing so, at least for the jobs specifically prohibited by the statute. That’s a lot of kids out of work — many of whom really do work on farms their parents own, just not “exclusively”.
Also, as I said in my last comment, I read the entire document. Feel free to read it yourself and double-check my accuracy. I think you will find, as I did, that beyond simply listing what the proposed new regulations are, there are also pages upon pages upon pages of explanation as to why, exactly, this bill was thought to be necessary, as well as a short history about why, over the years, each of the added regulations regarding juvenile farm labor were thought necessary in their time. The children of migrant workers are mentioned in the document only twice: once, when discussing why it had been thought necessary, years ago, to re-interpret what was meant by “school hours”, since migrant children didn’t always go to school and therefore didn’t have “school hours”, and the second time, when discussing why it had been thought necessary to include a provision for safety regulations for vehicles involved in the transport of migrants (and their children) to and from their camps or homes and the fields. I’m sorry, but there is absolutely no mention whatsoever about the children of migrant workers being the focus, or even having been in mind at all, of the currently proposed hazardous working conditions clauses that we’ve been talking about. In fact, from the lengthy explanations they did give, as to why these new regulations were thought necessary, it was quite clear that the bill’s new regulations were not, as you proposed, originally intended to protect migrant workers’ children (as a separate class) at all.
My guess as to who these regulations were actually intended to protect? Farm workers unions. The more cheap, young, non-unionized labor gotten rid of, the more well-paid adult unionized workers needed to make up the difference. Which would also explain the advocacy of the new regulations by migrant workers’ associations (unions). But that’s just my guess.
I agree with Susan B. There have been so many people on this thread jump on and chastise Sarah for posting this with the title she did. She is a writer. She wrote a title that caught people’s attention and made them want to read the article.
I grew up on a farm and live on a farm with my husband and three kids. While most jumped on Sarah criticizing her for posting this, the reality is that they are out of touch with reality. While maybe every urban and suburban kid has the opportunity to cut grass (ooh, a dangergous machine, the lawn mower) or flip burgers locally, in our area, those types of jobs are not as plentiful, particularly for a rural kid. My kids aren’t going to drive 10-15 miles to mow lawns for other and we have one fast food restaurant (Subway), so there just aren’t that many jobs for teens. Many rural teens work for their uncle, grandparent, neighbor etc. My sister milked cows for her summer job.
I am thankful this ridiculous regulation was withdrawn. Now to work on the hundreds of other ones cranked out by this administration and those before it. I also love (SARCASM NOTED) how so many people tried to point out how benign this law is. It is just one more step on a slippery slope. Parents (not the government) should be those who help their teens decided what is appropriate for work. People are not stupid!!
I will leave with a quote I saw: Never forget that everything that Hitler did in Germany was legal. -MLK
I went to the Dept. of Labor’s site to read the entire statute myself ), and while it’s long and very complicated, here’s one thing I was able to take away from it.
In order to be covered by the statute, the child must first of all, be working for pay. In addition, in order to be exempt from the limitations of the statute, the child must be working on a farm either owned SOLELY by his own parent(s), or, if the farm is not owned by them, then doing work managed SOLELY by his own parent(s).
So what does any of that have to do with a child “doing chores on his own parents’ farm”, as Sarah (and the Daily Caller) warned about? Plenty.
A 15-year old youngster, let’s say, doing chores, for which he is paid, on dangerous equipment (as defined in the statute) on his family’s farm which is owned by, say, his father and his father’s brother, or perhaps his father and his grandfather, and being supervised in such chorework by his uncle or grandfather, would NOT be exempt from the limitations of this statute.
This would be an example of a youngster “doing chores on his own parents’ farm”, and not being exempted at all — exactly what Sarah was warning about.
Sarah, hi, thanks for such a great site. I’m a bit confused though. I read this posting and was very upset. However it took me two days to find time to read further and I couldn’t find anything that said that kids of farmers would be stopped from working on their family farms, in fact, there appears to be an exemption for exactly that. I know the rule has been dropped, but can you please give me the site that says that Obama’s proposed rule would affect the children of farmers? I’m just wondering who would misinterpret the rule this way. thanks so much.
If there appears to be an exemption then logically there must first have been a prohibition.
This is so messed up. I think it makes sense that children not be allowed to handle dangerous, complex equipment, but banning from all farm work is ridiculous. I suppose it makes sense from a ‘sub-optimal choice under time constraints with congress with its fangs drawn trying to destroy you’ point of view – its a lot harder to get some more complex legislation through than to simply put a blanket ban on it all. That’s government for you.
I think children nowadays would be blessed to have a country upbringing. I grew up on a ‘farm’ (well, it was more a residence in the Russian countryside, but we grew everything we ate, and our neighbours kept animals which is how we got our dairy and meat and eggs, so I call it a farm), and I helped with everything – gardening, weed-pulling, milking, egg-collecting, etc, etc…and it was awesome. I spent all my time outside, in the sun…the only technology we had was a tiny, vintage TV (those ones with the thick ‘bubble’ screens…!) with a cassette player, where I would watch Disney cartoons with my mum in the evenings to learn English. And most evenings we spent watching shooting stars and giving them names with the local boys. I’m so grateful I didn’t grow up playing video games, and when I have children, I’ll make sure they don’t either. I hate the fact that everything is being digitized. Nowadays ‘playing tennis’ means busting out the wii (when I tell people I don’t have and don’t intend to acquire a wii, they look at me like they want to put me in a straighjacket).
Yeah, The Matrix was a good movie, but do you seriously want to live in a computer?
To see just how abnormal this is, read Joel’s Salatin’s first chapter in Folks, This Aint’ Normal.
Children, Chores, Humily and Health
‘t_Normal_Chapter_1.pdf
Thanks Cathy, that was a great read!
Update, April 26, 7:55 p.m.: Citing public outrage, the Department of Labor has withdrawn the controversial rulemaking proposal described in this article.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1tFdwxcja
OMG – you must be kidding me – this is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!
For those who care, the proposal has been withdrawn. Here’s the DOL’s press release: