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Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores
With out reading more than the article (dangerous I know), this is stupid. Yes, some of the chores performed by farm kids may be dangerous, but banning them outright?
To take it back to the illegal immigrant thread, how are we to continue our agribusiness if we're cutting off the learning source by banning children from learning from the ground up?
____________ Clicky
A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district member of Congress. But now it?s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.
The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families? land.
Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work ?in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.?
?Prohibited places of employment,? a Department press release read, ?would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.?
The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government?s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.
Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government?s plan will do far more harm than good.
?The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they?re not at their parents? house,? said Blinson.
?I started showing sheep when I was four years old. I started with cattle around 8. It?s been very important. I learned a lot of responsibility being a farm kid.?
In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field ? literally on a tractor ? when TheDC reached him. He said if Solis?s regulations are implemented, farming families? labor losses from their children will only be part of the problem.
?What would be more of a blow,? he said, ?is not teaching our kids the values of working on a farm.?
The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average age of the American farmer is now over 50.
?Losing that work-ethic ? it?s so hard to pick this up later in life,? Clark said. ?There?s other ways to learn how to farm, but it?s so hard. You can learn so much more working on the farm when you?re 12, 13, 14 years old.?
John Weber, 19, understands this. The Minneapolis native grew up in suburbia and learned the livestock business working summers on his relatives? farm.
He?s now a college Agriculture major.
?I started working on my grandparent?s and uncle?s farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12,? Weber told TheDC. ?I started spending full summers there when I was 13.?
?The work ethic is a huge part of it. It gave me a lot of direction and opportunity in my life. If they do this it will prevent a lot of interest in agriculture. It?s harder to get a 16 year-old interested in farming than a 12 year old.?
Weber is also a small businessman. In high school, he said, he took out a loan and bought a few steers to raise for income. ?Under these regulations,? he explained, ?I wouldn?t be allowed to do that.?
In February the Labor Department seemingly backed away from what many had called an unrealistic reach into farmers? families, reopening the public comment period on a section of the regulations designed to give parents an exemption for their own children.
But U.S. farmers? largest trade group is unimpressed.
?American Farm Bureau does not view that as a victory,? said Kristi Boswell, a labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation. ?It?s a misconception that they have backed off on the parental exemption.?
Boswell chafed at the government?s rationale for bringing farms strictly into line with child-labor laws.
?They have said the number of injuries are higher for children than in non-ag industries,? she said. But everyone in agriculture, Boswell insisted, ?makes sure youth work in tasks that are age-appropriate.?
The safety training requirements strike many in agriculture as particularly strange, given an injury rate among young people that is already falling rapidly.
According to a United States Department of Agriculture study, farm accidents among youth fell nearly 40 percent between 2001 and 2009, to 7.2 injuries per 1,000 farms.
Clark said the regulations are vague and meddlesome.
?It?s so far-reaching,? he exclaimed, ?kids would be prohibited from working on anything ?power take-off? driven, and anything with a work-height over six feet ? which would include the tractor I?m on now.?
The way the regulations are currently written, he added, would prohibit children under 16 from using battery powered screwdrivers, since their motors, like those of a tractor, are defined as ?power take-off driven.?
And jobs that could ?inflict pain on an animal? would also be off-limits for kids. But ?inflicting pain,? Clark explained, is left undefined: If it included something like putting a halter on a steer, 4-H and FFA animal shows would be a thing of the past.
In a letter to The Department of Labor in December, Montana Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg complained that the animal provision would also mean young people couldn?t ?see veterinary medicine in practice ? including a veterinarian?s own children accompanying him or her to a farm or ranch.?
Boswell told TheDC that the new farming regulations could go into effect as early as August. She claimed farmers could soon find The Labor Department?s Wage and Hour Division inspectors on their land, citing them for violations.
?In the last three years that division has grown 30 to 40 percent,? Boswell said. Some Farm Bureau members, she added, have had inspectors on their land checking on conditions for migrant workers, only to be cited for allowing their own children to perform chores that the Labor Department didn?t think were age-appropriate.
It?s something Kansas Republican Senator Jerry Moran believes simply shouldn?t happen.
During a March 14 hearing, Moran blasted Hilda Solis for getting between rural parents and their children.
?The consequences of the things that you put in your regulations lack common sense,? Moran said.
?And in my view, if the federal government can regulate the kind of relationship between parents and their children on their own family?s farm, there is almost nothing off-limits in which we see the federal government intruding in a way of life.?
The Department of Labor did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Re: Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores
I think it is a bad idea.
I worked on a tobacco farm growing up. For the most part it was incredibly safe work for teenagers. The dangerous work was usually left to adults
Above Us Only Sky
I was a farm kid growing up. I did the farm chores with my brothers...feeding calves every morning and night. I think it is ridiculous that they are even talking about this. I loved it. It was our way of life. Would it make a difference if they kids are getting paid or not?
Farmers are very independent minded people and they raise their kids the same way. There is no way that this law will be passed.
Even though I think kids should be able to work, on the farm I worked there was at least 1 finger that got caught in the sewing machine every summer.
Above Us Only Sky
So we don't want factory farms and the administration is also going to drive family farms into the ground. What exactly are we supposed to eat? Soylent Green?
Obviously, not a fan.
My Chart My Nest Bio
ridiculous. a solution in search of a problem.
I can get far more hurt working at McDonald's than picking potatoes.
and taking away FFA/4H safety training for government training? Why spend money to do this if it hasn't been proven that non-profits are doing a bad job.
next require medical personnel to get CPR training from the government and not from Red Cross or Am. Heart Asso.
This is dumb as hell.
/signed a farm kid
This would eliminate 50-75% of all employment for teens in my hometown.
Isn't the FFA/4-H already part of the Dept of AG? How is that not already the govt. doing the trainings? What exactly would change?
This article is fishy to me.
I'm wondering if it has anything to do with this young man
http://www.kcci.com/news/central-iowa/Dad-finds-son-after-farm-accident/-/9357080/10923092/-/svrdgjz/-/index.html
TTC #1 since 10.2011
FFA is in public schools all over the place. 4-H is under the jurisdiction of state land grant universities-- there is enough research and government oversight.
This has been a huge deal for a long time in the agriculture community.
Bad things happen to kids on farms. Unfortunately. But you know, bad things happen to kids all over- car accidents, abductions, etc. The agriculture community does training all the time- they start training kids early and continue into adulthood.
Telling kids that they can't work on farms is going to kill family farms. I am one who got my start on a family farm and started working on neighboring farms starting in eighth grade at my grandparents farm. I'm hoping to raise my child in the farming tradition as well. At 23 months he has his own flock of chickens that he and my husband care for (and he asks about nearly every single morning). We started months ago teaching him about tractor safety-- staying away from equipment and animal safety- giving animals a safe distance and not going into their pens alone.
It's going to start a whole new generation of entitled kids who don't know how to work and are lacking a work ethic.
/signed farm kid, farm mother, farmer, 4-H Leader
Ditto the others - this is dumb. You know I would like to NOT be grimacing and holding my nose when I vote for Obama in November. Please, admin, give me a reason to still like him.
On top of the tin foil hat Agenda 21, and whatever bill it is that is supposedly going to take away all farms/farmers markets, my mom will be having a field day with this.
Applause/ Signed an FFA/4-H alumnae
I'm not a farm kid, but there have been several articles in my state about this - one even about 2 weeks ago that clarified the law.
From what that article (here in MT) clarified, and keep in mind I'm a city kid, it doesn't actually restrict farm duties/chores for kids who live on the farm with their legal guardians, it restricts activities for young farm volunteers and hired workers. So farm kids can still brand cows, work with steers/horses that are "in-tact" and so forth. They can also still raise 4-H/FFA livestock/animals that are "in-tact" if they do it under their parents' supervision on their own farm and not at a community farm type place.
It's pretty hazy...so here's the link and two key quotes from the local article
"On Sept. 2 last year, the Labor Department released a long list of proposed updates to the Fair Labor Standards Act. The new provisions would prevent anyone employed under the age of 16 from working with animals when they are branded, castrated or vaccinated; to work in a pen with an un-castrated male bovine, porcine or equine over six months old; to work on a ladder or scaffolding that is more than 6 feet off the ground; or to use powered machines, from an electric drill to a tractor. The regulations would also ban anyone under 18 years old from working in stockyards, grain elevators, feedlots, livestock exchanges and auctions.
....
The Labor Department says the new regulations will not change the Fair Labor Standard Act's minimum age requirements for agricultural employment, only the tasks young people can complete. The rules still allow children working on a farm owned by their parents to participate in any task, even those that may be deemed hazardous."
Are you united with the CCOKCs?
DTEG:
Part of the issue is that the wording isn't very specific, and is open to a lot of interpretation.
Another issue is it only talks about direct parental supervision. Under the law, my 6' 5", 250 lb, 17-year-old BIL wouldn't be able to help his brothers vaccinate calves, unless his dad was standing right there. Is he physically able to do the task? Yes. Is he developmentally able to do the task? Yes. Is he trained to do the task? Yes.
I grew up exhibiting animals at the county fair. Every single summer I would work for hours with my fair heifers. When I was 10, my parents moved off the farm. I started showing my grandparent's/uncle's calves. My parents would drop us off on Monday and pick us up on Friday, every summer for almost 6 years. Under this law, that would be illegal. My parents would have to be on the farm while I worked with my heifer or helped my grandpa milk cows. When I was 15, my grandpa wouldn't have been able to teach me how to drive his tractor.
Another issue, is that there are laws about this kind of thing in place. A 14-year-old a few years ago in our area died in a grain bin accident. He should never have been there in the first place- it is illegal.
Kids have to take tractor safety classes and other safety classes to operate machinery now. This law might actually be detrimental in that untrained 18-year-olds will be out there on big equipment.
The government is trying to take place of parents, and it is not a good thing.
And come on, they don't need education or real jobs. They're just going to grow up to be yokels anyway!
my read shelf:
I grew up on a farm and drove tractors all the time once I was about 14. We were well-trained and an adult was always with us. Honestly, I'm not sure it was any less safe than my city friends playing in the streets.
We also did lot of farm chores including milking cows, baling hay, etc. but nothing that was inherently dangerous. There was the odd accident in the neighbourhood but I can't say they were more or less frequent than 'city' accidents. Hard to say - I don't know.
I would just think most farmers would ignore this law.
This is my main thought.
Yes it's ridiculous... but even if it were passed I don't think it would stop kids from working on farms.