A commentary by Terrilynn Hastreiter, Lakeshore Technical College Farm Business/Dairy Herd Management instructor.
At age 5, my father was putting me on the lawn mower saying, "just follow my path and you will be just fine."
Mind you that I may have been so caught up in the moment looking around that I didn't notice the small pine tree in front of me leaving us without our growing Christmas tree for that year.
By age 8, Dad needed a warm body to drive the tractor so he could pick stones. "Hop up there, I will put it in first gear, and you will be fine."
With a big smile on my face, I was learning the work ethic that was building my future.
By age 12, I was chasing beef cows and calves around the yard to corral them for calving or separating them to go to market.
There my brother and I ran the yard with our twigs in hand stirring up the cows just to separate out that certain animal. By that time, I was telling myself how much fun farming and agriculture really was.
As I reminisce my stories, I know that there are many people my age and older that can tell their stories from their younger years.
We laugh about these stories now, but we don't realize how much those events impacted us in our current years - both by building our character, work ethic and love for agriculture.
As I stop at farms in Manitowoc County, I continue to see our youth running lawn mowers up and down the yard, milking cows with Dad, and hauling loads of corn silage from the fields to the silo and back.
I smile because they are our future in agriculture.
Apparently, one group has closed their eyes to seeing the future of agriculture to continue strongly in the United States. This group being the U.S. Department of Labor
The Department of Labor released proposed changes to the Child Labor in Agriculture standards that would limit what work young people could do in agriculture and related fields.
As I review these proposed changes, I am beyond frustrated at how one group can say they find it necessary to compare the workforce of agriculture jobs to non-agriculture workforce.
As these employees of the U.S. Department of Labor develop "proposed changes," I believe they need to leave their desks for more than a day and experience what agriculture really is.
I can imagine there would be no farm experience on any one of their resumes. So, how can they dictate what the regulations should be without having a clue of what agriculture really entails?
I understand that agriculture is a dangerous occupation, but where is the DOL getting their statistics?
Injuries only account for one in six young workers.
Some of these absurd changes that the DOL is looking to enforce are:
• Prohibit driving all motor vehicles and off-road vehicles by youth younger than 16.
• Prevent the employment while working on roofs, scaffolds, ladders, and elevations greater than six feet.
• Prohibit certain occupations involving working with or around animals: including animals with known dangerous behaviors; assisting in animal husbandry practices (such as branding, breeding, dehorning, vaccinating, castrating, and treating sick animals.)
• Prohibit work inside a fruit, forage, silo, grain bin, or manure pits.
• Prohibit the use of tractors of any horse power, including small garden-tractors; whereby the training exemptions will either be removed or changed to 90 hours of study.
These are just a few of the proposed revisions; for more information, visit www.dol.gov/whd/CL/AG_NPRM.htm.
Now if this does not have you concerned yet because you have family working on your farm, there are provisions to that also.
DOL is enforcing that the only individuals exempt are youth that are working on their mother and father's farm. So nieces, nephews, grandchildren and all others will fall into the categories that were listed above.
In my mind are these changes practical? No.
Where are we directing our youth?
Are we encouraging our youth to become "pencil pushers" or bigger video game junkies?
I look back and that is the age that we learned our work ethic and what we enjoyed doing the most. But all that was hands-on experience, even though it was "dangerous."
Children from age 10-18 are like sponges. They soak up all the information that they can, which develops what their interests really are and may lead to their future careers.
So if we limit the "sponges" from work that they can't do because the government says so, what is the future of agriculture?
We all did the same agriculture work that our youth are today and we turned out just fine.
Currently some of my dairy herd students at Lakeshore Technical College did not come from a family farm, but instead a neighbor farm or farm that was looking for some extra help.
Their employment started under the age of 18 at their first farm and their interest in dairy was found there from the work they were exposed to. The work included tractor driving, cow handling and silo repairs.
It was those hands-on and close involvement that encouraged them to pursue an agriculture career and attend Lakeshore Technical College Dairy Herd Management program.
Now the DOL proposal will limit that continued interest in agriculture.
With the public mind so concerned about food shortage and food expense in the grocery stores, we will see an entire new issue very soon.
There will be no one to make the food because we will not have the people to milk the cows or to plant the corn.
Along with this uncalled for proposal, DOL is looking to increase Farm/tractor Safety course hours from 24 to 90 hours.
When I first heard this all I could say was, are you kidding me? I currently teach the tractor safety courses at LTC and know that 90 hours is an unrealistic number.
Attending Lakeshore Drivers School located in Sheboygan consists of only 30 hours of classroom material to be eligible to test for a driver's license.
DOL expects youth to do three times that amount for a tractor safety course.
The data shows that individuals receiving their driver's licenses are involved in more accidents than youth that are working on farms.
So what is the reason for the 66-hour increase of training? The DOL refuses to put out that information.
If this law does go through, Lakeshore Technical College will not be holding our tractor safety courses this upcoming spring or at all for that matter.
Who will teach this course? It will be very surprising if anyone will hold a training session. The time and cost of holding this course is more than most programs can handle.
This is very sad news to say that we may have to take an important training away from our youth because of some individual that does not understand agriculture.
It is in my hopes that I have the support of the agriculture and non-agriculture community on this topic. We need to be out there educating the ones that do not understand what the DOL is trying to pass.
Our youth should be our focus because they are our future in the growth of agriculture.
