Feds criminalizing small family farms under ridiculous 'labor laws' that target children

Friday, April 27, 2012 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: family farms, child labor, laws

(NaturalNews) For civilization to persist, each subsequent generation must be equipped by the previous one with the knowledge and skills to grow food, which traditionally occurs on family-scale farms from parent to child, or from seasoned expert to young amateur. But new labor laws being proposed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) would prohibit children from performing many of the routine farm chores they have been involved with for centuries, which some see as a direct attack on small-scale agriculture.

The Daily Caller reports that the DoL, under the guidance of the Obama Administration, is proposing that child labor laws be modified to prohibit children under the age of 16 from working with animals, for instance, or from being allowed to work with food storage bins. The proposal also seeks to prohibit children from "being employed in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials," which essentially makes it a crime for farmhands to touch produce once it has been picked.

Originally put forward by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis last fall as a way to further protect children from unsafe working conditions, the proposal threatens unprecedented government overreach into the normal operating procedures of private farms. And while the new provisions would reportedly contain an exemption for children working on farms owned by their parents, they would still drastically limit the freedom of children to learn about agriculture from a young age.

You can view the DoL's proposal announcement here:
http://www.dol.gov/opa/media/press/whd/WHD20111250.htm

"I started working on my grandparent's and uncle's farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12," said John Weber, a 19-year-old college student majoring in agriculture, to The Daily Caller. "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."

Many others also share Weber's sentiments, as they too have told reporters in recent days about how being immersed in a farming environment that involved performing farm chores from a young age was crucial to their now-developed understanding and appreciation of agriculture. Without these experiences, many of these individuals likely would have ditched farming and chosen other professions instead.

Federal government to take over all on-farm safety training programs

Besides all the restrictions, the labor law proposals would also end the federal government's support for independent safety training and certification courses taught by youth-based agricultural groups like 4-H and FFA. Instead, children interested in agriculture would have to take a 90-hour federal government training course that would likely be far less beneficial and effective, and a lot more bureaucratic.

So not only does the government want to dictate who can and cannot work on farms, but it also wants to steer the entire ship of early childhood agricultural education. And since the government has made it abundantly clear in recent years that it favors industrial, genetically-engineered agriculture systems over family-scale farms (https://www.naturalnews.com/033387_Obama_GMOs.html), we all know where this crackpot, government-run endeavor would lead.

Endgame goal to separate Americans from their land, from their animals, and ultimately from each other

As benign as such proposals may seem to some -- the government is only trying to protect the children, right? -- they truly represent just another nail in the coffin of individual liberty, particularly as it pertains to private agriculture. If you have been following the escalating trend of government tyranny against small farms and food freedom in recent years, it should be abundantly apparent that the government's primary goal in these new proposals is not to protect children from danger, but rather to further separate Americans from the food they eat.

Working hand-in-hand with Monsanto and the drug companies to create a total monopoly on food and health, the federal government is working feverishly to remove Americans from their own land, and create a culture of complete ignorance about food, nutrition, and agriculture. If Americans have no idea how to farm, in other words, they will be at the mercy of a centralized agricultural system that dispenses only chemical-laced genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) and other toxic substances for consumption.

The only way to stop all this madness is to refuse, in the form of blatant civil disobedience, any and all provisions and restrictions that erode or destroy our freedom to grow, buy, sell, and eat the foods of our choice. And this includes continuing to teach each new generation, regardless of whatever laws may or may not be passed, how to independently produce safe food without interference by government tyrants.

Sources for this article include:

http://dailycaller.com