Proposed Federal Regulations will update the 40 year old laws governing how kids work on farms, including family farms.

If you ever worked on your family’s farm growing up, or helped out your grandparents, aunts and uncles, or neighbors on their farms you know how much work it takes to make a farm successful. Everybody needs to pitch in and do what needs to be done; to make hay when the sun shines, so to speak.

Under the proposed regulations, children can work on their parent’s farm with minimal restrictions. On a non-parent farm however, child-safety concerns will prohibit or restrict operation of farm equipment under a variety of scenarios. The basis of this change focuses on injury to youth. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s most recent data (2009) more than 15,000 youth under the age of 20 were injured on farms. Note however that this includes a variety of injuries related not only to farm equipment, but ATV’s used on the farm and farm animals.

There’s no doubt that there are safety issues on farms. Teaching safe operation and handling are key subjects for everyone on a farm. This could impact farm operations and that connection with agriculture and the family that working on a farm can give you. But there’s a bright side…don’t worry kids, you can still work for free and you’ll always have option of manually cleaning the barn.

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