Female farm workers often victims of sexual violence; researchers want legal working age raised, other steps

Graph from The Conversation from Department of Agriculture data

Americans don't usually connect female farm workers with sexual assault, but maybe that should change.

ABC's "American Crime" opened its third season on a tomato farm in North Carolina, "where it showed a young woman being brutally raped in a field by her supervisor. . . . 'People die all the time on that farm. Nobody cares. Women get raped, regular,' another character tells a police interrogator. The show's writers did their research, report Kathleen Sexsmith, Francisco Alfredo Reyes, and Megan A. M. Griffin for The Conversation, a platform for journalism by academics. Studies show that 80% of Mexican and Mexican American women farm workers in the U.S. have experienced some form of sexual harassment at work. "While violence against women in agriculture may seem like an issue mainly experienced in developing countries, the truth is that it also happens all too often to women and girls on farms in the U.S."

Researchers found that most women are abused "by men in positions of power, such as foremen, farm labor contractors, farm owners and co-workers . . . . Immigrant women farm workers are vulnerable because of power imbalances in their male-dominated workplaces. Women represent 28% of the nation's farm workers, making them a minority on many farms. Most are immigrants from Latin America, and many are undocumented. Girls under the age of 18 are particularly vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse on farms."

Agriculture's unique labor laws may also contribute to abuses. The researchers report: "Children as young as 12 can be hired on farms without a cap on the number of hours they work, as long as they don't miss school. . . . Experts say young girls may be especially vulnerable to sexual harassment and violence on farms because they are less likely to recognize and report abuse. Democrats in Congress have repeatedly introduced versions of the Children's Act for Responsible Employment and Farm Safety Act since 2005. The bill would help address the vulnerability of young girls in farm work by aligning the legal farm working age with other industries."

"As we see it, sexual exploitation perpetrated by men in positions of power instills fear that keeps farm laborers obedient, despite precarious working conditions – and keeps fruits and vegetables cheap," Sexton, Reyes and Griffin write. "We agree with the United Nations that sweeping change is needed to empower women, raise farm productivity and promote human rights in the global food system. As U.S. lawmakers craft the next Farm Bill, they could do enormous good for women around the world by setting an example in American fields and farms."

Based on their research conclusions, Sexton, Reyes and Griffin outline steps to change below:
As a first step, we believe lawmakers should pass the CARE Act, which would raise the legal working age on farms to 14, reducing the number of young girls who are vulnerable to abuse.
Second, legalizing the nation's approximately 283,000 unauthorized farm workers would make those workers less vulnerable to sexual abuse by expanding employment opportunities outside of the agricultural sector.

Third, in our view, efforts to legalize farm workers – most recently through the Farm Workforce Modernization Act – should strengthen labor law enforcement and provide well-funded channels for reporting abuses and changing jobs when abuse occurs.

Conservative group works to relax child-labor laws, citing 'parental rights'; biggest victory has been in Arkansas

Chart by Jacob Bogage, Washington Post, from Department of Labor data

With guidance from a conservative lobbying group, some states are relaxing their child labor laws; the changes may make exploitive practices more common and violators harder to find, report Jacob Bogage and María Luisa Paúl of The Washington Post: "Iowa lawmakers voted last week to roll back certain protections. . . . The state's Senate approved a bill to allow children as young as 14 to work night shifts and 15-year-olds on assembly lines. . . .The measure, which still must pass the Iowa House, is among several the Foundation for Government Accountability is maneuvering through state legislatures. . . . The Florida-based think tank and its lobbying arm, the Opportunity Solutions Project, have found remarkable success among Republicans to relax regulations that prevent children from working long hours in dangerous conditions."

"On the surface, the FGA frames its child-worker bills as part of a larger debate surrounding parental rights, including education and child care," Bogage and Paúl write. "It achieved its biggest victory in March, playing a central role in designing a new Arkansas law to eliminate work permits and age verification for workers younger than 16. . . . . Sponsor, state Rep. Rebecca Burkes (R), said in a hearing that the legislation 'came to me from the Foundation [for] Government Accountability.'"

"Since 2016, the FGA's Opportunity Solutions Project has hired 115 lobbyists across the country with a presence in 22 states, according to the nonpartisan political watchdog group Open Secrets," the Post reports. David Campbell, professor at the University of Notre Dame, told Bogage and Paúl, "The reason these rather unpopular policies succeed is because they come in under the radar screen. . . .Typically, these things get passed because they are often introduced in a very quiet way or by groups inching little by little through grass-roots efforts."

Annie B. Smith, director of the University of Arkansas law school's Human Trafficking Clinic, told the Post, "This is likely to make it even harder for the state to enforce our own child-labor laws. . . . Not knowing where young kids are working makes it harder for [state departments] to do proactive investigations and visit workplaces where they know that employment is happening to make sure that kids are safe." The lack of documentation leaves children exposed. "The work permits — more than 2,700 of which were issued by Arkansas officials in 2022, according to state government data — required proof of age, parental permission and an employer's signature," the Post reports. "They left an 'important paper trail' of where children were employed and reminded businesses of the rules, said Laura Kellams, from the nonprofit Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families."

Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 partly to "stop companies from using cheap child labor to do dangerous work, a practice that exploded during the Great Depression," Bogage and Paúl report. "The Labor Department has seen a 69 percent increase in minors employed in violation of federal law since 2018, officials reported. Between 2018 and 2022, federal regulators opened cases for 4,144 child labor violations covering 15,462 youth workers, according to federal data."

Homeland Security takes a deeper look at possible human trafficking of under-age workers to slaughterhouses

A child cleans a slaughterhouse for PSSI; the subject
was blurred by the source. (Department of Labor photo)

"Last month, the Labor Department found that Packers Sanitation Services Inc. . . . employed 102 children at 13 slaughterhouses across eight states," reports Julia Ainsley and Laura Strickler of NBC News. Now, "The Department of Homeland Security has widened its investigation into migrant children found cleaning slaughterhouses and is now working with the Justice Department to examine whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the investigation."

The investigation is looking into "how Central American children, some as young as 13, wound up working dangerous jobs that are legal only for American adults by presenting identification stolen from U.S. citizens," NBC reports. "So far the investigation is focused on smugglers who may have provided the children with false identities and possibly led them to dangerous jobs. The companies themselves are not targets of the investigation, the officials said."

A former Packers Sanitation Services manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told NBC, "In this industry you have a lot of people who are undocumented workers. A lot of times it’s because they’re not going to pay well enough to hire people in America who want to do it." NBC reports, "The former manager confirmed that the company uses the federal government’s E-Verify program, but said that while some employees presenting false documents were turned away, it was common for workers who presented obviously false IDs to get hired as long as the documents stated they were legal and of age."

Packers Sanitation spokesperson Gina Swenson disputed the former manager, saying, "This is categorically false — period. We have been crystal clear that we do not want a single person under the age of 18 working for the company. We have trained and retrained our hiring employees on how to actively spot identity theft — as part of our extensive efforts to enforce this absolute prohibition against employing anyone under the age of 18."

Slaughterhouse-cleaning firm paid $1.5 million in fines after feds found minors using chemicals to clean equipment

Department of Labor map

In the fall of 2022, the Labor Department got an injunction from a federal judge in Nebraska requiring Packer Sanitation Services Inc. to stop 'employing oppressive child labor' and to comply with the department's investigation of the firm.

The department has now ended its inquiry saying it found "102 children as young as 13 working hazardous overnight jobs cleaning slaughterhouses in eight states in what it called a 'corporate-wide failure” by one of the largest food sanitation companies in the country," report Laura Strickler and Julia Ainsley of NBC News. "The Labor Department says the children who were working overnight shifts used 'caustic chemicals to clean razor-sharp saws."

Michael Lazzeri, regional administrator for the division in Chicago, told NBC, “Our investigation found Packers Sanitation Services’ systems flagged some young workers as minors, but the company ignored the flags. When the Wage and Hour Division arrived with warrants, the adults — who had recruited, hired and supervised these children — tried to derail our efforts to investigate their employment practices.”     

PSSI has paid a $1.5 million fine for the violations, "dictated by the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows a penalty of $15,138 for each minor who was employed in violation of the law, according to the Labor Department," NBC explains. "Advocates and lawyers for the children say some of the child workers for PSSI were unaccompanied minors who recently came across the southern border. . . . The company signed a consent decree in December with the Labor Department and agreed to abide by child labor laws after federal investigators documented 50 children working at slaughterhouses for it."

The company issued a statement: "We are pleased to have finalized this settlement figure as part of our previously announced December resolution with the DOL that ends their inquiry. We have been crystal clear from the start: Our company has a zero-tolerance policy against employing anyone under the age of 18 and fully shares the DOL’s objective of ensuring full compliance at all locations."

The company is based in Kieler, Wiscomsin, and contracts with at least 700 facilities and employee over 17,000 people nationwide, its website says.

Labor Dept. accuses big meatpacking sanitation firm of illegally employing children as overnight workers

Worker using a high-powered hose to clean
meatpacking equipment. (Labor Department photo)

A Labor Department investigation found that “One of the largest food safety companies in the United States illegally employed more than two dozen children in at least three meatpacking plants, several of whom suffered chemical burns from the corrosive cleaners they were required to use,” reports Remy Tumin of The New York Times.

The department said at least 31 children aged 13 to 17 were employed as overnight meatpacking cleaning staff by Packers Sanitation Services “in hazardous occupations. The jobs performed by children included cleaning dangerous powered equipment during overnight shifts."

Tumin reports, "Their jobs included cleaning kill floors, meat- and bone-cutting saws, grinding machines and electric knives, according to court documents. The mix of boys and girls were not fluent English speakers and were interviewed mostly in Spanish."

Packers Sanitation Services is based in Kieler, Wis., and contracts with at least 700 facilities and employee over 17,000 people nationwide, its website says.

The department got an injunction from a federal judge in Nebraska requiring the company to stop “employing oppressive child labor” and to comply with the Labor Department investigation.

The company says it has cooperated, and denies any child-labor violations. It “has an absolute company-wide prohibition against the employment of anyone under the age of 18 and zero tolerance for any violation of that policy — period,” it said in a statement.

Children on farms pick up risky behaviors from parents, Canadian study confirms; U.S. experts say it applies here

Farm kids learn how to farm from their parents, grandparents and sometimes even great-grandparents. They may also learn risky behaviors that get passed from generation to generation, according to a Canadian study that U.S. researchers say applies south of the border.

The study in the Journal of Rural Health surveyed farmers Saskatchewan farmers. It concluded, "Occupational health and safety risks and protections experienced on farms appear to be transferred between generations. This suggests the need to target farm owner-operators, the responsible authority on the farm, as a focus of primary prevention strategies aimed at injury risks to children and young workers."

The researchers at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Alberta wrote, "Family farms provide an opportunity to pass down traditions of hard work, valuable occupational skills and abilities, and family values. Some of these traditions, however, can have a negative side with respect to rural health. There is a quiet epidemic of traumatic farm injuries that are disproportionately experienced by farm children, which may be related to cultures of safety and risk-taking that are also passed down through generations."

Two leading farm-safety researchers in the U.S. told The Rural Blog that the study is valuable.

“This inquiry into the intergenerational aspects of farming practices is critical in broadening and deepening our understanding of how the social-cultural aspects of risk impact current and future generations of farmers,” said Casper Bendixsen, director of the National Farm Medicine Center at the Marshfield Clinic Research Institute in Marshfield, Wis. “While the study is based on Canadian farmers, the findings resonate with me as a U.S. researcher and as the son of farming and ranching. It also grounds what is theoretical, and sometimes mythical, into concrete, quantitative findings.”

Dennis J. Murphy, Nationwide Insurance Professor emeritus of agricultural safety and health at 

Penn State, wrote, “This research is innovative and very applicable to farm and ranch operations in the United States. I think agricultural safety and health researchers and educators have always thought along these lines but there is little, if any, direct research that supports these notions. Their suggestion that injury prevention strategies for the protection of children and young workers should target the responsible authority on the farm or ranch is certainly applicable throughout the U.S.”

Webinar to discuss safety guidelines for teen lawn-mowing

Many older children and teens mow lawns in the spring and summer; a new resource from the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety can help supervising adults keep them safe on the job, whether they're using push or riding mowers. More than 17,000 children and teens are treated for lawnmower injuries each year, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The National Center has added "Operating a Lawn Mower" to its list of nearly 30 interactive Agricultural Youth Work Guidelines.

Lawnmower safety will be one of the childhood agricultural safety topics covered during the AgriSafe Network webinar, "Children and Youth: Living, working and playing safely on farms." The webinar, which takes place from noon to 1 p.m. CT on April 4, is free but you must pre-register. Marsha Salzwedel, a Youth Agricultural Safety Specialist with the National Children's Center, will present the webinar.

Click here to learn more about the webinar or register.

Quick hits: appraiser shortage hurts rural market; N.M. is a black-lung hot spot; checklist to keep kids safer on the farm

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

The latest episode of Banking Journal, a podcast from the American Bankers Association, tackles a little-recognized problem for rural America: the shortage of qualified appraisers. It's hard enough to get people and businesses to move to rural America, but those who want to buy a farm or commercial real estate in rural America can face waits of several months while lenders wait for the appraisals. It can harm younger would-be farmers who want to buy in, since sellers might sell for a lower price to an older farmer who has more cash up front. There are significant barriers to entry for potential new appraisers as well. Read more here.

Black-lung disease is often thought of as something that mostly hits Appalachian coal miners, but New Mexico is seeing a surge in the disease as well. Dr. Akshay Sood, the Miners’ Colfax Medical Center Endowed Chair in Mining-Related Lung Diseases at the University of New Mexico, said "We’re not only a hotspot for black lung; we’re also a hotspot for silicosis, other pneumoconiosis, sarcoidosis, and interstitial lung disease." Read more here.

Children often help out around the family farm, which can lead to injuries. The National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety has published a handy printable checklist for parents to help keep kids safe on the farm. Find it here.

New safety guidelines released for kids working in agriculture

The National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety has announced a new set of Agricultural Youth Work Guidelines to help ensure that children and teens stay safe when helping out on the farm.

The guidelines were released on the first day of the International Society for Agricultural Safety and Health annual conference.

Every three days in the U.S., a youth under the age of 16 dies in an accident while working in agriculture. The number of fatal injuries to youth working in agriculture is higher than in all other industries combined. Though the number of agriculture-related deaths has steadily declined since 2001, the coalition of parents and agricultural organizations wants to make sure the mortality rate continues to decline.

"Too many of these injuries and deaths are associated with children performing agricultural work that does not match their developmental level/abilities," says Marsha Salzwedel, project leader and youth agricultural safety specialist at the National Children's Center.

The first such voluntary guidelines were formulated in 1999; the new guidelines are built on those along with the latest scientific research on child growth and development, agricultural practices and safety and child injury prevention.

Find more data on childhood agricultural injuries and labor regulation here.

Ag-related incidents kill a child once every three days; lack of age restrictions cited as key factor

A child dies every three days in an agriculture-related incident, according to the National Children's Center for Rural Agriculture Health and Safety. It cites lack of safety regulations, including age restrictions for use of equipment, as a key factor.

"Unfortunately, children dying in farm accidents is a common tragedy," Wisconsin State Farmer Editor Colleen Kottkee writes in USA Today.

Kottkee spoke with Bryan Weichelt, project scientist with the National Farm Medicine Center and the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety. Weichelt told Kottkee one contributing factor is that "Farms are often homes as well as worksites."

Bill Hanson explains to 9-year-old Brandon
the dangers of a tractor in a farm safety event
at Nebraska's Lincoln County Fairgrounds.
(Photo by B.A. Rupert)

"As a fifth-generation farmer, I can attest to the rooted tradition of cultivating the next generation through hands-on training and involvement. Yet, age-appropriate work with a focus on safety is critical, or there may not be a next generation to hand the farm to," Weichelt told Kottkee.

Traditions of rural farming families, "working side by side tilling the soil, milking cows, and tending other livestock are strong and deep," Kottkee writes."Any other industry has strict laws in place regarding child labor, including a minimum age of 18 for operating skid steers. Data indicates that youth (17 and under) are involved in 75 percent of skid steer injuries and deaths, and children ages 6 and under are involved in half of all skid steer incidents."

Insurance companies say they want to increase focus on child safety in farming

Three-fourths of insurance companies say they want to increase their company's focus on child safety in agriculture, according to a National Children's Center survey of 97 control specialists, underwriters, managers and supervisors at the 2015 National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies’ Agricultural Risk Inspection School, reports the National Children's Center in its quarterly magazine Nurture. The survey also found that 85 percent of respondents said they communicate safety messages with farmers and 83 percent adjust premiums based on loss-control surveys.

The Childhood Agricultural Safety Network has archived three recent webinars on child safety in agriculture. Two of those webinars, presented by the Grain Handling Safety Coalition, introduced
a curriculum "explained how it can be used to empower young workers" and educate parents, employers and community members. Another webinar, “It’s harvest season: Are the children safe?” describes "actual childhood injury incidents, previewed an injury news clippings website and offered proven safety strategies and resources that farmers, parents and employers are encouraged to use to keep children safe."

Drone pilot program in Brazil could benefit abused agricultural workers in the U.S.

A pilot program using drones could benefit abused agricultural workers throughout the world. The Brazil government announced that next month its labor inspectors, "who investigate properties that are suspected of employing workers in slave-like conditions, will use six drones equipped with cameras to monitor suspicious activities" of slave labor in rural areas, Adriana Brasileiro reports for Reuters. "Brazil defines slave labor as work carried out in degrading conditions or in conditions that pose a risk to the worker's life. Forced labor and working to pay off debts incurred with the employer are also considered slave labor."

In the U.S., 16 percent of all agricultural workers are undocumented. In Virginia, 26 percent of farm workers are immigrants, some of them young children, and in some states teenage immigrants are working 12-hour shifts in hazardous conditions in tobacco fields. In June, a California pot farmer was given a life sentence for killing an undocumented worker who was unhappy with his pay and working conditions.

"In May 1995, Brazil officially recognized the active use of slave labor in the economy," Brasileiro writes. "That year, the Labor Ministry launched a Special Mobile Enforcement Group that works with prosecutors and the police to find and raid farms and companies that employ slave workers. Since then, 50,000 people have been freed from slave-like work." (Read more)

Booklet offers agricultural safety and training guidelines for young people working in gardens

Now that spring is here and garden season has arrived, the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety has released an online booklet that helps adults decide "which tasks children should perform, what equipment they can use, what training they should receive and how much supervision is needed," says the center.

The booklet includes: training tips; work basics, such as bending lifting and climbing; guidelines for hired youth; responsibilities of employers and supervisors; and basic principles for training teens. The garden section focuses on: picking rock; hand-weeding; harvesting strawberries; hand-harvesting vegetables; composting' pruning trees and vines; and harvesting tree fruit. (Read more)

Virginia House kills child farm labor ban; 26 percent of state's farm workers are immigrants

A bill in Virginia that would have prohibited farmers from hiring non-relatives under 18 to work in direct contact with tobacco leaves was shot down last week in a lopsided vote by a Republican-controlled House committee, Travis Fain reports for the Daily Press in Newport News. "Virginia already has extensive child labor laws, but there are exemptions for farming."

"The bill would have addressed reports that show nicotine poisoning and other problems in children who work on tobacco farms," Fain writes. "The nicotine leaches into their skin, activists testified, causing nausea and other problems. Sometimes children wear garbage bags to protect themselves from the leaves, which exacerbates concerns of over-heating in the hot sun.

Non-citizens account for 26 percent of all Virginia farm workers, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Markus Schmidt of the Richmond Time-Register in May 2014. Vilsack told him, “You got a situation where agriculture in Virginia depends on immigrant labor.” (Read more)

Human Rights Watch said in May 2014 that children, some as young as 7, are getting sick working in tobacco fields. The New York Times reported in September 2014 that teenagers, most of them immigrants, are being exposed to health dangers while working 12-hour shifts in tobacco fields.

Agriculture, forestry and fishing is the industrial sector with the highest rate of workplace fatalities

The highest rate of fatal injuries in any U.S. industry sector is in agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting. More than 100 children die on farms each year, but only about one in five of them are working. Those are some of the statistics on a fact sheet issued by the Agricultural Safety and Health Council of America. ASHCA says the annual cost of occupational injuries in agriculture is $8.3 billion in medical costs and lost productivity. Tractors are the leading cause of death and the typical cost of one overturned tractor is $1 million.

This is one part of the fact sheet. For a larger version, click on it. For the entire document, click here.

Effective safety programs can save $4 to $6 for every $1 invested, according to ASHCA, which says it is "a not-for-profit coalition of agribusinesses, producer organizations and safety professionals." Other facts on the sheet include: Although 87 percent of farms are operated by individuals or families, hired workers perform 60 percent of the work on U.S. farms, and 80 percent of those employees are foreign-born; and the world will need 70 percent more food by 2050 for the predicted 9.5 billion people. "Productive, efficient agriculture includes the preservation and well-being of agricultural workers at every level," ASHCA says.

Teenagers, mostly immigrants, working 12-hour shifts in hazardous conditions in tobacco fields

"For years, public-health experts and federal labor officials have sought to bar teenagers under 16 from the tobacco fields, citing the grueling hours and the harmful exposure to nicotine and other chemicals, but their efforts have been blocked," Steven Greenhouse reports for The New York Times. Many of the young workers are immigrants or children of migrant workers. (NYT photo by Travis Dove: Saray Cambray Alvarez, 13, works near Pink Hill, N.C.)

There is no federal law barring children 12 and older from working any length of time in a tobacco field, as long as it doesn't interfere with school, Greenhouse writes. That means it's not uncommon to see 12-, 13-, 14- and 15-year-olds pulling 12-hour shifts during the hot, humid summer. In contrast, federal law sets a minimum working age at 14 for non-farm work, and children under 16 are limited to working eight hours a day.

"Three years ago, Hilda Solis, then the labor secretary, proposed declaring work in tobacco fields and with tractors hazardous — making that type of work illegal for those under 16," Greenhouse writes. The Obama administration, during the middle of a election year, "withdrew Ms. Solis’s proposed rule after encountering intense opposition from farm groups and Republican lawmakers. Agricultural organizations said the move would hurt family farms and make it harder for young people to learn farming skills."

Meanwhile, public-health experts say hundreds of children under 16 continue to work in America’s tobacco fields, Greenhouse writes. "Dr. Thomas A. Arcury, an expert on tobacco and migrant workers and a professor at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, said tobacco work was particularly harmful to children, pointing to nicotine poisoning, pesticides and dehydration." Arcury told Greenhouse, “They’re not small adults; they’re children. They have more surface area to body mass. They’re still developing neurologically. Their reproductive systems are developing.”

"Last year, Human Rights Watch interviewed 141 tobacco workers, ages 7 to 17, for a lengthy study, finding that three-quarters had suffered nausea, dizziness and rashes," Greenhouse writes. Edinson Bueso Ramirez, 15, whose family fled Honduras because of gang violence, told Greenhouse, “They take advantage of the younger workers. They rip you off on pay. My mom, she worries I might get hurt at work. I tell her, ‘We need it to pay the bills.’”

In addition to sickness, teenage workers also complain about lack of access to water and bathrooms, sexual harassment and having to wrap their bodies in garbage bags to avoid being exposed to harmful chemicals, Greenhouse writes.

Not all tobacco interests want young workers, Greenhouse writes. "Philip Morris International bans its growers from using workers under 18, a measure that goes well beyond American law. Some labor contractors, however, evidently flout this requirement without the growers’ knowledge." (Read more) Also, the Council for Burley Tobacco has said no workers under 16 should work in tobacco.

Human Rights Watch says children are getting sick working in tobacco fields, calls for safer practices

For families who still raise tobacco, it is fairly common for the whole family, including small children, to help with the tobacco harvest. But a report by Human Rights Watch found that children as young as 7 years old working on tobacco farms in the nation's biggest tobacco producing states, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia, are "suffering serious health problem from toiling long hours in tobacco fields to harvest pesticide-laced leaves for major cigarette brands," Charlie Campbell reports for Time. The children "get so sick that they throw up, get covered by pesticides and have no real protective gear."

Researchers interviewed 140 child workers, who reported suffering from "nausea, vomiting, headaches and other health problems associated with nicotine poisoning, known colloquially as green tobacco sickness, which is common among agricultural workers who absorb the toxic substance through their skin," Campbell writes. "On small farms, there is no minimum age set for child workers."

Kentucky state Sen. Paul Hornback, a Republican,in  "says he worked in tobacco fields from when he was 10 years old and doesn’t think further legislation is necessary." He told The Associated Press, “It’s hard manual labor, but there’s nothing wrong with hard manual labor." (Read more)

Child-labor laws go easy on farmers, despite high death rate among farm workers aged 15 to 17

Jacob Mosbacher, 10, drives a tractor on his
grandparents' farm near Fults, Ill. (AP photo)

"In most states, a girl or boy as young as 12 could work long hours in the broiling summer sun picking the fruits and vegetables for your Labor Day picnic, and it’s legal," Marsha Mercer writes for Stateline. "Federal child labor laws set a minimum work age of 16 for most occupations, but the laws exempt minors who work in the agriculture and entertainment industries."

The law bars workers under 16 from hazardous jobs on farms but "protects workers under 18 in non-farm jobs," Mercer notes. "Teens from 15 to 17 working on farms are four times more likely to die on the job than teenagers in all other jobs, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports."

States also have child-labor laws, and Mercer gives a rundown of them. Mary Miller, child labor specialist in the Washington State Department of Labor and Industry, who has worked in child labor for about 20 years, told Mercer, “I’m constantly skunked that there’s no constituency for child workers. They don’t vote.” Two years ago, the Obama administration abandoned its efforts to "revise the list of hazardous duties children could perform," Mercer notes.

Grain bin and silo entrapment deaths stay steady as other farm fatalities drop; teen boys at risk

The rate of serious injury and death on U.S. farms has fallen, but the number of people dying by entrapment in grain bins and silos has remained steady, with the annual number of such accidents rising over the past decade and reaching a peak of 26 in 2010. Many of the victims are teenage boys, with 14 dying since 2007. "The deaths are horrific and virtually all preventable," John Broder of The New York Times reports. (Mirror-Democrat photo by Bob Watson: deadly Illinois silo accident rescue in 2010)

Experts say the high rate of silo deaths can be blamed on the large amounts of corn being stored in the U.S. to meet global demand for food, feed and ethanol-based fuel. The persistence of such deaths "reveals continuing flaws in the enforcement of worker safety laws and weaknesses in rules meant to protect the youngest farmworkers," Broder writes. Last year, the U.S. Labor Department attempted to strengthen farm child labor laws, but backed down after push-back from farmers who claimed they shouldn't be told by the government that their children can't work on the family farm. The legislation was never directed at farmers' families and wouldn't have covered conditions on small operations, which account for 70 percent of grain entrapments, Broder reports. Experts say most farmers are aware of the risks, but don't have the proper equipment or training to protect their workers against grain avalanche.

Purdue University agricultural professor William Field told Broder "virtually every entrapment is preventable" by following Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines. Those guidelines require employers to turn off all power equipment before workers enter silos, provide workers with a harness or supporting chair and have an observer watch grain bin and silo workers at all times. (Read more)

Child farm-labor rules, unchanged after lobbying, probably affect more children than statistics indicate

The recent debate about child farm-labor laws revolved around what many farm families said was an integral part of growing up on a farm: helping out around the fields. What many may have overlooked, though, is that the children of migrant workers don't grow up on farms; they just work on them. And advocates say "lax enforcement of underage labor laws and inadequate safety rules for teens are threatening the long-term health of thousands" of those migrant children, Anthony Schick of The Oregonian reports. (Oregonian photo by Faith Cathcart: Diana Cristal Mendoza Sanchez, 12, picks blackberries)

Farm lobbyists have blocked tighter restrictions on the work children may legally do, and efforts for closer monitoring have failed, Schick writes. The industry won a huge victory when the Obama administration stopped the Labor Department's plan to revise child labor rules written in 1974 and adopt in regulation a policy adopted by the second Bush administration more than 10 years ago. Most child labor in heavy agricultural states is largely hidden "because official data do not include underage workers," Schick reports. "Visits to fields and interviews with farmworkers indicate it is far more widespread than statistics show."

Schick continues: "Nearly everyone involved has an incentive to allow underage labor. Farmers need crops picked, farmworkers need money children bring home and advocates for workers risk alienating whole families if they broach the subject. The tenuous residency status of many Mexican-born workers also plays a role." Even though parents and farm owners say the jobs children do are relatively safe, but Schick reports that all children working on farms face "significant risks:" Child farmworkers suffer fatal injuries four times as often as in other industries, extreme heat, repetitive strain and exposure to toxic substances can create chronic health problems. (Read more)