More Govt. Overreach! Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores

Here we go again!! Now Obama's Labor Dept. is seeking to crack down even more on the family farms. Are they aiming to shut down family farms altogether? Makes me wonder. Just dig through the litany of red tape that is roaring out of the EPA, USDA, and now this. If they force the closure of these farms, who will step in to scoop up all of the land? The Govt?

This is just out of line!!

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

The govt. taking the reigns from 4H and FFA (Future Farmers of America)! What kind of message are they sending to our kids?

“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.”

I guess our govt. feels threatened by the enterprising and hard working kids!!

The Environmental Protection Agency reports that the average age of the American farmer is now over 50.

There you have it!! They are just licking their chops by waiting or by forcing these aging farmers out of business. IMO of course.

“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.”

Just more BIG Bureaucracy! The Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division sends inspectors from Farm to farm and in the last 3 years that division has grown 30 to 40%. I guess they need more regulations to give these new hires something to do!!!

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.”

Of course... No comment from the Dept. of Labor.

Read more: dailycaller.com...

In 2009, President Obama appointed Michael Taylor as a senior adviser for the FDA.

Monsanto getting away with murder and devastation...

[SNIP]



Please do not post links to petitions.

This sounds like a typical ultra fanatical left wing agenda.

I bet many of the "experts" and "intellectuals" involved with all the super expensive "studies" and "recommendations" have little or no "time worked" on a farm.

They're a bunch of wild paranoid control freaks.

All on our dime naturally.

Originally posted by jibeho
I guess our govt. feels threatened by the enterprising and hard working kids!!

I think the idea is to force farmers to replace them with taxpaying people.

About time we all started bartering and removed these safety Nazis from out lives. Their goal is to make safety that expensive that we all need to work harder for it...

I know a few kids that work on a organic family farm. They are some of the smartest kids!

They aren't lazy either- in fact, when my son was about 8 or 9, one of these girls got on his CASE about not helping his mama. She was about 9 too. They were playmates and even though she was 'a girl' she could always keep up with him.

We were leaving the library - note she was at the library with her mom too- and I had all the books. My son was complaining about something and this little girl stopped him and said "Just listen to yourself and look, you aren't helping your mama carry those books at all, what kind of person are you?"

He looked stunned but he has always helped me carry stuff since that day without my asking. lol

Maybe he will marry her one day. lol She wins all kinds of 4H awards now that she's a teen.

So it sounds like what has been part of making this wonderful child a wonderful child, will be illegal?

This is absolutely ridiculous!! How many kids have grown up having to do farm chores? I did, and I believe I turned out better because of it. Have a better work ethic, understand the life cycle and where my food comes from, Learned how to drive early, ect.
What a jerk! Leave the darn farmers alone!!!!!!


Sorry, I forgot that we WANT everyone completely dependent on the government. We aren't suppose to know how to do things on our own and provide for ourselves.

What a better way to program your children to make them believe they are entitled to things without having to actually work for it.

I worked on a farm as a young man for a couple years. It is hard, honest work and I would not trade that experience for anything in this world.

What I am most curious about however is just how does the Government plan to enforce this? That, in my opinion is the most important question. Just how exactly do you intend to enforce this? Without total surveillance of a farm, how exactly do you know if a kid is hauling some hay bails around? Or picking up eggs? Or feeding the livestock?

Doesnt this pretty much kill 4-H?

Family owned rural farms are passed down to the children. Up here where I live, the kids learn how to run the farms by having chores. Helping with the animals, everything. It's a way of life that has been the back bone of America for decades.

This is the administration's attempt to break that back bone. Take farms away from private individuals, make them government properties only. If you knock a block from under the foundation of family owned farms, the kids learning the business to carry it on....end of farming as we know it.

Up here, the FFA is one of the most important programs connected with the schools. It teaches them responsibility, builds character...keeps people off welfare....guess that's not what this administration wants.

Des

They truly are the thought Police !

Why not chop of their hands at birth, then they would not be able to ever do anything, ever, the only problem is that they would not be able to be soldiers either when they grow up. Turn the children into useless eaters and when they grow up, they will still be useless eaters, only with a bigger appetite.

I wonder if they will be using this against the Amish? (Of course they will!) If they do come down on the Amish and other rural religious communities I wonder if we will even hear about it? People around here generally look down on the Amish and their horse drawn buggies. However, many also do business on a regular basis with the Amish farms. What about their right to their religious beliefs?

reply to post by MichiganSwampBuck


You raise a good question. It sounds like these new regulations are written with intended vagueness to leave the doors wide open for just about any crackdown. Just like the EPA crackdown on hog farmers based on as yet to be defined odors. The crackdown on the handling of manure from cows to chickens etc etc etc. Permit fees, licensing fees, inspections regulations that require a law degree to interpret on and on it goes.

I've worked with the Amish on and off for years here in Ohio and I just hope that the govt. leaves them the hell alone.

Can we set up similar programs to prevent children that steal candy bars or have done bullying from becoming politicians?

Farming is one of the few jobs that still require apprenticeship to learn properly. And even then, farmers still attend learning seminars through various Granger and other agricultural outfits to learn new methods to improve efficiency and yields well into their 50's and 60's.

Successful farming is truly an art form. Killing 4H and FFA for government programs taught by what we can only assume will be college graduates that might have done a little time on a campus School of Farming farm would be like expecting proper training from an electrical engineer on how to be a machinist.

As for the Amish, it will be a test of Job proportions to see if they will remain pacifist when the last bits of their livelihood are removed.

As much as I can't be surprised, what more can we expect from a noted Constitutional Scholar who proves more and more he has never even skimmed let alone read it?

A minute of research can be beneficial.

www.labor.gov...

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

Calm down.

(I love how overreaching government is purely "the left". Apparently some folks were asleep the 8 years prior to "the left" inhabiting the White House.)

Originally posted by jibeho
The govt. taking the reigns from 4H and FFA (Future Farmers of America)! What kind of message are they sending to our kids?

The message is clear.

"You will eat what we allow you to buy".

"Food will be grown and controlled by those who we approve"

"Monsanto - No Food Shall Be Grown That We Dont Own"

Monsanto - In Bed With The Feds

The Agriculture Department is dutifully drafting a comprehensive “coexistence policy” that supposedly will diffuse tensions between conventional (chemical but non-GMO), biotech, and organic farmers. Earlier this week industry and Administration officials met in Washington, D.C. to talk about coexistence. Even though the Organic Consumers Association tried to get into the meeting, we were told we weren’t welcome. The powers that be claim that the OCA doesn’t meet their criteria of being “stakeholders.”

www.counterpunch.org...

Originally posted by jtap66
A minute of research can be beneficial.

www.labor.gov...

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

Calm down.

(I love how overreaching government is purely "the left". Apparently some folks were asleep the 8 years prior to "the left" inhabiting the White House.)

It is overreaching and if you knew anything about the tight knit agriculture community you would know that kids also help relatives and neighbors with their farms as well. It is often the only way to prep the fields in Spring and to get product to market when its time. It's a community in and of itself.

And it would prohibit youth in both agricultural and nonagricultural employment from using electronic, including communication, devices while operating power-driven equipment.

And yet in city after city all across our nation Kids are texting while driving vehicles at highway speeds in the presence of other innocent drivers.

The department also is proposing to create a new nonagricultural hazardous occupations order that would prevent children under 18 from being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials. Prohibited places of employment would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.

www.labor.gov...

Livestock Auctions! Ever been to an authentic County Fair? Ever watch a proud child work to auction off his prized livestock?

Thanks for dropping by..

I been to a "authentic country fair" and they smell just like this power grab.

Zeig heil!

reply to post by jtap66


Thank you for a dash of common sense, I was just about to look this up
2nd line

reply to post by Rossa


Wow! if that's all you garnered from this, good luck. Notice in the OP that I said FAMILY FARMS. Perhaps you need to study the definition of "family".

The end result is more imported foods and less food production here. I think that's the real agenda.

Can't level the global playing field without chipping away at our own economy. Obama, the man who would be King of the World, is not that far from the truth I think.