Is this the death of the family farm?

[BridgeTroll]

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/

Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores
Published: 1:31 AM 04/25/2012
By Patrick Richardson

A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members 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 â€" literally on a tractor â€" 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 â€" 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.”



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t3w4Jp4r

[fsquid]

I don't get this at all.  I have to be missing something.

[finehoe]

Typical right-wing dishonesty.  It says right in the DoL press release linked to in the article:

The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents.

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

Typical right-wing dishonesty.  It says right in the DoL press release linked to in the article:

The proposed regulations would not apply to children working on farms owned by their parents.

True.  But how much of this:

“I started working on my grandparent’s and uncle’s farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12,”

will it affect.

[finehoe]

But how much of this will it affect.

Since the proposal is just updating the Fair Labor Standards Act which already establishes a minimum age of 18 for hazardous work in nonagricultural employment and 16 in agricultural employment, probably not much.

[BridgeTroll]

Spoken like someone who has never worked on a family farm... Family farms are owned and run by... um... er... families.  Grandfather, uncle, aunt, brother.  The labor pool of the family generally works on everyone elses farms... incuding the neighbors.  Most children begin working on those farms well before the teen years.  Waiting until 16 is just plain ignorant.

This is government intruding where it does not belong...

[fsquid]

If this passes then FFA and 4-H are dead.

[finehoe]

This is government intruding where it does not belong...

No, it's just another right-wing lie.  The government is not "banning farm chores" it's updating a 50-year-old law that already prohibits certain hazardous tasks that is directed at hired laborers.

Most children begin working on those farms well before the teen years.  Waiting until 16 is just plain ignorant.

No, the ignorant part is trying to pretend this law affects children working on their families' farm when it clearly is aimed at hired employees, like other child labor laws.  Or do you agree with disgraced former Speaker Gingrich's statement that child labor laws are "truly stupid"?

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

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 â€" 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 be finalized 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



Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/25/rural-kids-parents-angry-about-labor-dept-rule-banning-farm-chores/#ixzz1t4ub1nGo

[finehoe]

“It is important to note that our proposed rule is designed to strike the right balance. (It) doesn’t change the parental exemption, which allows the child of a farmer to do anything at any age, at any time of day, on a farm owned by his or her parents.”

-Labor Secretary Hilda Solis

[finehoe]

All of what the DOL proposes “is within the confines of legislation.” Legislation not only allows the children of farmers to work unimpeded on the (family) farm without any age restriction, (there are) a number of different exceptions that allow children even under 12 years old to work in agriculture under certain, circumscribed conditions. That’s been in the legislation since the beginning and nothing in (the new proposals) will disturb that.”

-Michael Hancock, DOL Assistant Administrator for Policy

[Non-RedNeck Westsider]

“It is important to note that our proposed rule is designed to strike the right balance. (It) doesn’t change the parental exemption, which allows the child of a farmer to do anything at any age, at any time of day, on a farm owned by his or her parents.”

-Labor Secretary Hilda Solis

So what happens when you and your family are a couple of farms down trying to help out the neighbors when Mr. Inspector shows up while your 14 yr old is driving a tractor?

[urbanlibertarian]

What about owned by his or her grandparents, aunts/uncles, cousins, neighbors, etc.?

[fsquid]

What happens to FFA and 4-H those meetings and events usually take place somewhere other than your farm.  I guess I shouldn't have worked on my grandfathers far every July growing up.

[finehoe]

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