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Durham, N.H.

LAST month, a proposal by the United States Department of Labor to prevent children under age 16 from working in dangerous farm jobs ignited a firestorm in conservative media outlets. The new rules would have restricted having young workers handle pesticide, operate heavy machinery, cut timber and perform other agricultural tasks identified as hazardous to children by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

Conservatives quickly went on the attack. Senator Jerry Moran, a Kansas Republican, argued that "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." Fox News posted a story entitled, "Team Obama Wants Children Banned from Doing Farm Chores." Sarah Palin chimed in on Facebook: "The Obama administration is working on regulations that would prevent children from working on our own family farms."

So the Obama administration quickly reversed course, acknowledging "thousands of comments expressing concerns about the effect of the proposed rules on small family-owned farms."

This is not the first time reform of agricultural child labor laws has been beaten back by a supposed threat to the family farm. In the 1920s a proposed Child Labor Amendment to the Constitution was fiercely contested. The amendment would have given Congress power to regulate the labor of people under age 18. But by orchestrating a sophisticated campaign that included front groups with names such as Citizens' Committee to Protect Our Homes and Children, business interests frightened farm families with propaganda about a government conspiracy to forbid chores on the family farm.

In 1924, at the height of the controversy, the president of the Southern Textile Association, whose interest was to prevent regulation of cheap child labor in cotton mills, sent an estimated 50,000 pieces of literature to Southern farmers claiming that the proposed amendment would invade their homes and give the federal government control over their children. The anti-amendment campaign was so effective that reformers spent the majority of their time rebutting misinformation that was spreading throughout the country. By the spring of 1925, the amendment was a dead letter.

The amendment's defeat was a great reversal for a movement to end child labor that had achieved enormous success, until the 1920s. The child laborer had become, during the Gilded Age, a symbol of capitalism's worst excesses. Reformers, many the descendants of antislavery activists, defined child labor as the worst national evil since slavery and invoked the passion of their forebears as they pushed for federal regulation.

By 1916, reformers had secured a federal child labor law - the Keating-Owen Act - without much controversy. The bill prohibited the products of child labor from interstate commerce. Two years later, though, the Keating-Owen Act was declared unconstitutional by a pro-business Supreme Court that was out of step with national sentiment.

Of course, the family farm was never the target of reform legislation, though it was used rhetorically by the opponents of reform. In the 1920s, as now, reformers were explicit that their legislative efforts would not affect children working on family farms or on the farms of relatives acting in parental roles. But by shifting the debate to red herrings - the supposed downfall of the private farm, and correspondingly of parental authority and rural ways of life - the opposition managed, as it has again now, to distract us from the real problem of exploitative child labor on farms.

Before the bugaboo of prohibiting chores on the family farm was invented by business interests in the 1920s, protecting children from all forms of labor exploitation was a moral issue that united the nation. Reformers' victories rested on the widespread conviction that our nation would never be truly free until all forms of child labor were abolished from our midst. By the time New Deal legislation was passed, however, child labor was defined much more narrowly. The reformers' goal of protecting children from every type of labor exploitation has been all but forgotten.

The recent proposal by the Department of Labor was intended to protect poor migrant child workers who do seasonal farm work for "Big Agriculture." They sorely need it. According to Human Rights Watch, child farm workers are at greater risk of pesticide poisoning, serious injury, heat illness, and death than any other youth workers in America.

The hullabaloo revealed that the same commercial forces that thwarted the Child Labor Amendment in the 1920s continue to stymie reform today. In an age when Big Agriculture still benefits from the laxity of our child labor laws, the reformers' legacy is one we would do well to reclaim.

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Opinion | Pitting Child Safety Against the Family Farm

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Durham, N.H. LAST month, a proposal by the United States Department of Labor to prevent children under age 16 from working in dangerous farm jobs ignited a firestorm in conservative media outlets. The new rules would have restricted having young workers handle pesticide, operate heavy machinery, cut timber and perform other agricultural tasks identified as hazardous to children by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.

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Growing up, my younger sisters and I were Dad's chore help. He taught us how to feed cattle, drive the four-wheeler and tractor, stack bales, pitch manure, fix fence, chop weeds and treat sick calves. While kids in town may have had to do chores like wash dishes and make their bed, we were busy working outside, learning from a young age that the cattle relied on us to care for them.

Although I didn't always appreciate having to work on the ranch, looking back now, I know the chores helped shape me into who I am today. More than that, without us to help with the chores, Dad would have had to hire employees to help.

If the Obama administration's Department of Labor (DOL) had its way, a lot of kids wouldn't be allowed to help on the farm or ranch. When DOL proposed a rule earlier this year regarding youth in agriculture, farm and ranch families were perplexed. Young people play a huge role in family-owned agriculture businesses, and the proposed rule, which was later withdrawn, would have been a detriment to those farm families who rely on kids to help with everything from cattle chores, to throwing square bales, to driving machinery.

But, just because DOL pulled back the proposed rule doesn't mean agriculture felt confident about future regulations that might impose on family traditions. So, Rep. Tom Latham (R-IA) introduced the Preserving America's Family Farm Act (H.R. 4157), which was passed a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday, July 24.

H.R. 4157 will prevent the DOL from finalizing or enforcing its previously proposed rule, ensuring that this rule will not be reintroduced. Similar legislation (S. 2221) has now been introduced in the Senate by Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Jerry Moran (R-KS).

Here's hoping S. 2221 is passed quickly, so that America's farm and ranch families can feel secure that their children can be a part of the tradition of food production.

What do you think of the legislation? If passed by the U.S. Senate, will this measure serve the purpose of protecting farm and ranch families?

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Farm And Ranch Kids Get Opportunity To Work

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Growing up, my younger sisters and I were Dad's chore help. He taught us how to feed cattle, drive the four-wheeler and tractor, stack bales, pitch manure, fix fence, chop weeds and treat sick calves.

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Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores

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Rural kids, parents angry about Labor Dept. rule banning farm chores | Rules would ban farm kids from working on ladders, using battery-operated screwdrivers, handling livestock

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At the height of the tobacco harvest season, Malawi's lush, flowing fields are filled with young children picking the big green-yellow leaves. Some can count their age on one hand.

One of them is five-year-old Olofala, who works every day with his parents in rural Kasungu, one of Malawi's key tobacco growing districts. When asked if he will go to school next year, he shrugs his shoulders.

One thing is clear to Olofala already: work comes first, education second. His sister, Ethel, 12, is only in year three. She attends school irregularly because she has to work, or because she is sick. "I cough," she says. "I have chest pains and headaches. Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath."

Such complaints are not uncommon. Many of Malawi's estimated 80,000 child tobacco workers suffer from a disease called green tobacco sickness, or nicotine poisoning. Symptoms include severe headaches, abdominal cramps, muscle weakness, breathing difficulties, diarrhoea and vomiting, high blood pressure and fluctuations in heart rate, according to the World Health Organisation.

Since the handling of the leaves is done largely without protective clothing, workers absorb up to 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine daily through their skin, equal to the amount of 50 cigarettes, according to 2005 research by Prof Robert McKnight, of the College of Public Health at the University of Kentucky, Lexington. Farm owners routinely plead ignorance of the health implications. "I never heard about touching tobacco leaves being dangerous," says Fraston Mkwantha, who plants 15 hectares of tobacco in Kasungu district.

At the consumer end of the chain, smokers are constantly reminded of the associated health risks. Most are oblivious to the reality that, far from harming only themselves, their toxic habit is slowly killing the underage children involved in the production process.

Until the 1980s, much of the world's tobacco was grown in the US. Today, however, about 85% of worldwide production comes from the global south, where tobacco child labour is a major problem, according to a 2010 US Department of Labour report (pdf).

"In any developing country where tobacco is grown, you find child labour starting at the age of five," says Marty Otañez, a researcher at the University of California's tobacco control research and education centre.

Malawi, which has the highest number of child labourers in Africa, is a key offender. Health issues aside, children are also financially exploited. Olofala and Ethel often work 12-hour days, but neither earns a salary. They "help" their parents, who work on one of Kasungu's 22,000 registered tobacco farms and estates. Other kids receive an average of $0.25 for long hours of unrelenting work.

They are arguably the lucky ones; some never see their money at all. "We have many reports of children who were lured into labour with promises of good pay. But at the end of a season, all they get is an old sweater," says Grace Masanya, Malawi project manager for Plan, the international child rights NGO.

At the heart of the problem is Malawi's poor economic situation. Parents involve their children in economic activities to provide food for the family.

Over the past decade, the country has become one of the five largest tobacco producers in the world, largely due to low tariffs on unmanufactured tobacco imports, cheap labour and lack of regulations. According to the UN's statistical division, more than 98% of Malawi's low-cost leaf is exported, with the EU and the US top destinations.

And more than 90% of Malawi's tobacco is bought by two US-based leaf buyers, Universal Corporation and Alliance One International, which resell it to international tobacco firms. Their main clients are two of the world's biggest cigarette manufacturers, Philip Morris (Marlboro) and British American Tobacco (Lucky Strike). Consequently, Malawi's tobacco is found in the blend of almost every cigarette smoked in the west.

Child labour rights

The country is a signatory to the UN and International Labour Organisation (ILO) child labour conventions, and also has its own legislative framework barring the employment of children under 14. So why does the government turn a blind eye? The answer is simple: Malawi's economy is heavily dependent on tobacco, which makes up 70% of its export earnings, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation.

"Some estates follow anti-child labour regulations, but others purposefully flaunt the law in the interest of higher profits," says Plan Malawi advisor MacDonald Mumba. Over the past two years, only 49 farm owners have been prosecuted in Malawi, he says. Most received a $34 fine.

Gaps and inconsistencies in Malawi's legislative framework contribute to the problems of child labour, according to the ILO.

"The legal framework is very weak," confirms Unicef child protection programme officer Tomoko Horii, who believes promises to eliminate child labour amount to little more than window dressing presented in response to mounting international pressure. The laws lack specific targets to reduce child labour and, most importantly, an appropriate budget. "The budget allocation is minimal. So far all projects have to be financed by international NGOs," says Horii.

Her sentiments are echoed by Khalid Hassan, the ILO's child labour adviser in Malawi. "Ratifying conventions and passing laws doesn't solve the problem," says Hassan. "You need money, commitment, cost-effective programmes, infrastructure and hard work."

The tobacco giants, who all have anti-child labour policies in place, insist they abide by the rules. British American Tobacco (BAT) says on its website that it does "not employ children in any of our operations worldwide", but admits that using intermediaries to purchase tobacco makes it difficult to trace the country from which they buy the leaf and ensure all farm owners follow the rules.

That is bad news for countries such as Malawi, where the education system is feeble and only a third of children complete primary school. "Unless the education sector scales up to offer quality education to all children, they will continue to work," says Horii.

Tobacco growing is extraordinarily lucrative for the industry. Financial reports for 2008 by the five big tobacco companies - BAT, Philip Morris, China National Tobacco Company, Imperial Tobacco and Japan Tobacco - show that they collectively earned $300bn. This is more money than the GDP of all but 40 countries worldwide.

Part of the reason for those huge profits is that tobacco giants benefit from $1.2bn in unpaid child labour costs, according to Otañez's colleague Prof Stanton Glantz. Replacing child labour with adults paid the minimum wage would increase the production costs by $10m per year in Malawi alone, he says.

For Glantz, the solution is simple: "If major tobacco companies were genuinely committed to improving the socio-economic conditions of child workers, they should rectify harmful business practices by enforcing a policy that they will not purchase any tobacco grown using child labour."

The tobacco giants disagree. "Simply stopping altogether our purchases of tobacco from Malawi will do nothing to alleviate the serious issue of child labour in this country," says Anne Edwards, director of external communications for Philip Morris.

While this standoff continues, the people of Malawi benefit little from their "green gold". Malawi remains one of the least developed nations in the world, ranking 153 out of 169 countries on the 2010 Human Development Index. About 40% of the 13.2 million Malawians live below the poverty line of $1.25 a day.
* Kristin Palitza is a freelance journalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. The research for this article was financially supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism in Washington DC.

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Child labour: the tobacco industry's smoking gun

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At the height of the tobacco harvest season, Malawi's lush, flowing fields are filled with young children picking the big green-yellow leaves. Some can count their age on one hand. One of them is five-year-old Olofala, who works every day with his parents in rural Kasungu, one of Malawi's key tobacco growing districts.

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GRAND RIDGE, Ill. -- Tossing hay into cattle pens is the first chore Austin Walter remembers doing on his parents' farm. When he was 9, he got his first lesson in operating a tractor - in first gear only, his dad, Darren, says, "so I could go catch him."

Austin, who is now 14, tends heifers, makes sure the barbed-wire fence around the pasture is intact and helps clean equipment and care for calves on his grandfather and great-uncle's bigger farm a couple of miles down the road.

"This is what I want to do," says Austin, an A student and football player who has won many awards for showing livestock at fairs. "If you grow up in the farm atmosphere and you're safely trained and you enjoy it, I think you should be allowed to."

Proposed federal regulations could alter Austin's plans to work part time for pay on his relatives' farm. The Labor Department wants to update child-labor rules governing agricultural work for the first time in four decades.

The new rules would:

*Prohibit children under 16 who are being paid from operating most power-driven equipment, including tractors and combines. Some student-learners would be exempted from the ban on operating tractors and other farm implements, but only if the equipment has rollover protection and seat belts.

*Bar those under 18 from working at grain elevators, silos, feedlots and livestock auctions and from transporting raw farm materials.

*Prevent youths 15 and younger from cultivating, curing and harvesting tobacco to prevent exposure to green tobacco sickness, which is caused by exposure to wet tobacco plants.

*Prohibit youths from using electronic devices such as cellphones while operating power-driven equipment.

The legal age for children to be employed on a farm is 16 and would not change. The Fair Labor Standards Act also allows children 12 to 15 to have non-hazardous farm jobs under certain conditions.

The proposed regulations would not apply to children working at farms owned by their parents, but they would prevent youngsters from doing some jobs for pay at the farms of neighbors and relatives.

Threat to a lifestyle?

The proposed rules drew more than 18,000 public comments after they were published in September in the Federal Register and created a ruckus among farmers and ranchers. Some members of Congress hope to block them from taking effect.

"It's just more government trying to get in the middle of our lives" and could "change the whole (rural) lifestyle," says U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-Mo., who operates a 160-acre farm. "Farming is a very dangerous occupation, and you have to be aware of what you're doing, but I'm a whole lot more concerned about the safety of my kids and grandkids on the farm than the government."

Youngsters helping out on neighbors' farms "is a slice of Americana," Luetkemeyer says. "This is how we grew up."

Nancy Leppink, deputy administrator of the Labor Department's Wage and Hour Division, says the changes are necessary to keep children safe. More than 15,000 youths under the age of 20 were injured on farms in 2009, according to the latest data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Most injuries involved farm chores, followed by accidents on all-terrain vehicles, horses and tractors.

The rules would not prevent anyone under 18 from performing non-hazardous jobs such as cleaning barns on farms and won't bar them from participating in 4-H and Future Farmers of America (FFA) clubs.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis wants to implement the new rules, Leppink says, after analyzing fatality and injury data and concluding that some farm jobs are "too hazardous for children to be engaged in." Congressional approval is not required because the proposed changes amend existing regulations.

The Labor Department is reviewing public comments and plans to act as quickly as possible, she says.

Farm injuries among youths have been declining for more than a decade, says Barbara Lee, senior research scientist at the National Farm Medicine Center in Marshfield, Wis., but precautions are essential. "Adults should be able to make their own decisions about putting themselves at risk," she says. "But a child should not be put into that position."

When they are, the consequences can be dire. In July 2010, two boys, 14 and 19, died in a corn bin they were trying to clear in Illinois. A few months later, a 3-year-old Michigan boy died after falling from the combine his father was driving.

Reid Maki, coordinator of the Child Labor Coalition, which fights exploitative child labor, said in comments submitted on the proposed rules that delaying the changes would mean that youths working on farms "will be killed and maimed unnecessarily."

Mark Vagts, 53, a dairy farmer in West Union, Iowa, first sat on a tractor when he was 5. He taught his son and daughter, now adults, to use caution around farm animals and equipment when they were very young. Farm work, he says, "builds confidence and teaches kids to be responsible." He now hires local youths to help on his farm, and he opposes the proposed limits.

"No. 1, they take away our liberty. That really bugs me," he says. "I'm sick of regulation. My answer to regulation is education." He believes that youngsters who work on farms should first take safety courses through the FFA or other organizations, and he wouldn't object if young workers were required to take such courses.

In a comment he submitted to the Labor Department on the proposed rule changes, Vagts wrote, "We often need help with baling hay and straw, chopping hay and hauling manure. It is an opportunity for young people to earn money and develop good work skills."

Safety through education

Darren Walter, 39, says Austin will take a tractor-safety course this summer so he can learn to disk fields. Austin already knows the basics: "You put the seat belt on, take the tractor out of park and you honk the horn to make sure nobody is around you," he says. "You check that there's nothing you're going to run into."

Austin says his parents and other adults make sure he's not around dangerous equipment or frisky livestock, and he doesn't mind. "If you aren't safe and you get hurt," he says, "then you can't participate."

Darren, whose grandfather died in 1975 when an axle broke on the sprayer he was driving, says he and his wife, Samantha, 35, would never put their sons Austin and Dalton, 8, at risk.

Samantha says Austin is never allowed to be around grain augurs, for example. "We don't even let that happen," she says. And Dalton won't necessarily be allowed to take on new chores at the same age Austin did. "Each kid is different," she says. "Dalton is maturing at a different rate, and he's not ready for certain things yet."

Darren Walter says the pending new regulations suggest that officials in Washington "don't understand how much we respect the value of our children's safety. We truly take it on ourselves to teach safety and responsibility and respect to our children."

Dalton, who wants to be a professional football player, sometimes helps put feed in buckets and throws hay from the loft of the barn. His big brother helps teach him how to do chores safely, and his dad says Dalton won't be ready to get on a tractor for a couple of years.

If Austin can't work on his grandfather's farm to save money for college, Darren Walter says, he'll have to find other work. "We're going to basically regulate rural youth into forcing them to go get jobs in town," he says. "Where are our future farmers going to come from?"

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Proposed federal rules would limit kids' work on farms

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GRAND RIDGE, Ill. -- Tossing hay into cattle pens is the first chore Austin Walter remembers doing on his parents' farm. When he was 9, he got his first lesson in operating a tractor - in first gear only, his dad, Darren, says, "so I could go catch him."

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CNN traveled deep into the interior of the Ivory Coast, discovering a human trafficking network and farmers using child labor in the production of cocoa.

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Stop Child Labor – Sign the Pledge! | UNICEF USA