Tag: 4-H

Labor Dept. Banning Farm Chores for Children


A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent kids from doing farm tasks has drawn lots of objection from rural-district members of Congress. Today it’s bring in barbs from farm kids themselves.

The Division of Labor is positioned to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child labor regulations to youngsters dealing with family farms, forbidding them from carrying out a checklist of works on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, the majority of kids under 18 can not work 62d6d3910dbf3f8f8038211beac1c061“in the storing, marketing and moving 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 rules, initially suggested August 31 by Labor Assistant Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of security training and qualification shown by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.

Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., informed The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will certainly do far more damage compared to good.

“The main concern I have is that it would keep kids from doing 4-H and FFA tasks if they’re not at their parents’ home,” claimed Blinson.

“I began showing sheep when I was four years old. I began with cattle around 8. It’s been extremely important. I learned a lot about responsibility being a farm kid.”.

In Kansas, Cherokee County Farm Bureau president Jeff Clark was out in the field– essentially on a tractor– when TheDC reached him. He claimed if Solis’s regulations are carried out, farming family members’ labor losses from their children will just be part of the trouble.

“What would be even more of an impact,” he said, “is not teaching our youngsters the values of dealing with a farm.”.

The Epa reports that the average age of the American farmer is currently over 50.

“Losing that work ethic — it’s so hard to pick this up later in life,” Clark said. “There’s other ways to learn how to farm, but it’s so hard. You can learn so much more working on the farm when you’re 12, 13, 14 years old.”

John Weber, 19, comprehends. The Minneapolis native grew up in the suburbs and learned about animals working summers on his loved ones’ farm.

He’s now an university Agriculture major.

“I started working on my grandparent’s and uncle’s farms for a couple of weeks in the summer when I was 12,” Weber told TheDC. “I started spending full summers there when I was 13.”

“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.”

Weber is additionally a little businessman. In secondary school, he claimed, he got a funding and acquired a few steers to raise for earnings. “Under these rules,” he described, “I would not be allowed to do that.”.

In February the Labor Department apparently backed away from what many called an unlikely grasp right into farmers’ households, resuming the public comment period on a section of the laws developed to provide parents an exception for their own children.

But the US farmers’ largest trade team is unimpressed.

“American Farm Bureau does not view that as a victory,” said Kristi Boswell, a labor specialist with the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It’s a misconception that they have backed off on the parental exemption.”

4-H Auctions: Teens Making Money


On the very first Saturday of the Minnesota State Fair, 18-year-old Tyler Otte’s champ Angus beef cattle made him $5,600.

That’s the price the Angus sold for in Saturday’s 4-H Purple Ribbon Auction, $1,400 more than the average in 2014’s public auction, according to fair authorities.

The mid-day prior to the public auction, Otte remained in the livestock barn brushing his Black Angus, and he was far from alone. Young adults from throughout the state were preparing their animals for the auction the following day.

The Purple Ribbon Auction occurs each year at the Minnesota State Exhibition. pix-0827ffaresultsjpg-ad5a9576513df593_large“It originated as an extra incentive for kids to participate in the fair activities”, stated 4-H volunteer Corky Modene, that raised animals for the 4-H auction himself in his more youthful years.

To get to the auction, young adults spend the year raising livestock and needs to win county fair competitions to get to the fair.

The auction makes big amounts of cash from purchasers. Kailey Davis of Freeborn County, who raised the champion of the 2010 Grand Champion Market Beef category– the one in which Otte competed– made $14,600. Eighty percent of auction profits go to the young people who raise the animals, while 20 percent, according to Modene, goes to 4-H scholarships and other curricula.

This will be Otte’s third year participating in the Purple Ribbon Auction, so he is no stranger to the process. Otte’s family has been raising cattle since he was in the second grade. “We keep buying them, so we keep raising them,” he claimed, casually.

Daily care throughout the year is the largest commitment when raising cattle for the public auction, Otte said. “You have to wash (bathe) them on a daily basis,” Otte claimed.

And the cattle call for unique, expensive feed, he said.

Bonnie Reed, a member of the 4-H Auction Committee whose kids used to join the auction too, claimed: “It takes hours a day to deal with them.”.

Another commitment in raising cattle is the issue of space to accommodate the animals; but Otte said that it wasn’t a problem for his family. “We live way in southern Dakota County, so it’s fine,” Otte said.

When asked about his feelings about raising cattle for massacre, Otte claimed that it’s not difficult to give them up at the end of the auction. “That could seem rough. But it’s what an animal is, I guess,” he stated, and also shrugged.

“It’s what it’s raised for,” added Reed.

Although Otte is not really connected to the cattle he raises, he is to the people he meets at the auction.

“You meet a lot of awesome individuals”, Otte stated. “You meet people from all over the state. We keep in touch.”

Otte considers visiting the University of Minnesota next year with a bunch of the people he has met via the 4-H auction.