Farm parents, their children, and the American Farm Bureau
objected strenuously to the proposed new rules. Although
children working on their parents' farms would specifically have
been exempted from them, it was partly in response to worries
about government interference in families and loss of
opportunities for children to learn agricultural skills that the
Obama administration shelved them. Whatever you think of family
farms, however, many child agricultural workers don't work for
their parents or acquaintances. Despite exposure to all the
hazards, these children never learn the craft of farming, nor do
most of them have the legal right to the minimum wage. And until
the economy stabilizes, the savings farms realize by hiring
children makes it likely that even more of them will be subject
to the dangers of farm work. We have a responsibility for their
safety. As one of the first acts of his new term, Obama should
reopen the child agricultural labor proposal he shelved in
spring of 2012. Surely, farm labor