No Kids Allowed in the Farming Industry

"Chili harvest" by USAID Guatemala is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 

Does it sound right having children work in the farm industry? Just imagine your children in the farm early in the morning till late in the afternoon. People might say that it is fine to have them work in the farm, but others may have different opinions. There are a couple of films, articles, and stories, that have explanations or examples of farm industry for children. There are so many reasons on why they should not work as a farmer. Children have the right to live a normal life as a child and go to school, play outside, spend time with friends and family. Some of the children can get sick or even die from being in the farm industry. “Agriculture is the only industry in which children as young as 12 are allowed to labor with virtually no restrictions on the number of hours they work outside of the school day,” the CARE Act’s sponsor, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard, D-Calif., said in a press release on June 20” (Buiano, 2019). According to this article, Buiano is against child labor on farms. She mentions that children should not work in the farm just because they can’t work in an air conditioning place at age of twelve. I honestly think that Children should not work whatsoever in the farming industry due to its dangerous conditions and the strain it puts on their education. Children working in the farm might not seem difficult but in reality, they suffer in many ways. Farm working is a really hard work for children. Why keep children in the farm industry knowing the harm it does? These arguments can be supported by Eric Holt- Gimenez. He argued that “The degree of vulnerability to these threats is highest for smallholders, women and people of color- the ones who grow, harvest, process and prepare most of the world’s food.” (Gimenez 251) This connects to The Harvest because the kids working in the field are people of color. The Harvest is a documentary of migrant child farmworkers, and focuses on three youth as they toil around the country picking crops. They are hardworking migrants that want to help out their family but also want to succeed in education. Children come to the United States to study and get education. It is not fair for them to come from their country and try to make a better living here but end up working in the farm. If that was the reason of them coming, they should just stay in their country where it is necessary to work in the farm. Children working in the farm is also dangerous in many ways. They can go through a lot of tough things throughout the day. “Children experience heat-related conditions from intense sun exposure. This includes heat exhaustion, heat stroke, dehydration, and even death. At a young age they may also be less aware of their body’s functions, and thus less able to recognize these conditions when they are occurring” (Children in the Field). Dangerous objects such as chemicals, cutting tools, exposure of the sun, and toxic pesticides can affect children for the rest of their lives. In the film titled The Harvest (La Cosecha) shows three different children working in the farm industry and each child had their experience. We have Victor as an example. He was putting plastic on the ground for the crops and out of nowhere, he started to notice that his skin started to fall. The reason of that was because of too much chemicals and they would also spray gas and fertilizer. He would also use bleach to wash off all the dirt from his arms. We have another example and her name was Zulema. She would help her mom cut the strawberries. She would use a specific tool for that, and she ended up cutting herself. Picking up a lot of pounds of fruit and vegetables was also bad for their health. Victor said that he would pick up one thousand five hundred pounds of tomato a day. Sometimes they would carry the double of that because they would load it off the truck to the factory. The heat was also very bad for all three children. Sometimes they even felt like they were going to just fall on the ground. They would work in the heat all day and that is the worst feeling ever. I know that feeling because I would work in construction over the summer with no kind of protection. Farmworkers being underpaid is also a problem in the farming area. Imagine getting paid one dollar per a twenty-pound bucket of tomato. That sounds horrible because you are suffering all day just to get one dollar a bucket. Victor from the film would get paid one dollar. Zulema signs an adult’s name when she turns in her baskets of strawberries to get paid. Her check would go under somebody else name. she would get paid sixty something a day of working. The paid doesn’t only suffer for children but also for adults. The price for getting paid should go up at least for the adults. In the article titled “Hardship on Mexico’s Farms, a Bounty for U.S. Tables” by Richard Marosi, he talked about the payment and how far the people would go to work. “The farm laborers are mostly indigenous people from Mexico’s poorest regions. Bused hundreds of miles to vast agricultural complexes, they work six days a week for the equivalent of eight dollars to twelve dollars a day.” (Marosi 284) In the same article, there was this twenty-two-year-old with a toddler back home in Veracruz and had been working at San Emilio for six weeks and had yet to be paid. Ramirez had lost twenty pounds because he would starve. He said, “We arrive here fat, and leave skinny.” (Marosi 286) Ramirez and several others get paid eight dollars and were owed as three hundred each and wouldn’t be paid until the end of their three-month contracts. All this gives us a very good view on the pay and also shows us evidence that everyone gets paid a little. These problems are basically everywhere and to anybody. All these problems should be change because people have different kind of problems and financial problems also. Another major problem for children working in the farm is their education. Education should be before everything in life. Children will have to chance to attend school if they keep working early in the morning till late afternoon. I honestly think that parents should let their children get educated instead of going to work. Most of the kids come to the United States to go to school and that is also one major law here. All children are supposed to finish high school. According to the “NCFH, Child Labor in Agriculture” pages, it states that children can work in their family member farm, local farms for part time or in the summer for extra money. (NCFH, 2018) The NCFH pages talks about farmworker health and it just gives different kind of information about the farm industry. It also tells us that they are not allowed to work while being in school. Going back to the film, it also has a girl named Perla Sanchez. Perla talks about her wanting to finish school and go to college to become a lawyer. Working in the farm is not going to help her accomplish that goal. There is just so many things that people don’t see and still want their children working in the farm. Parents say that they would send their children to work in the farm because it will teach them where their food comes from. Others say that it teaches the children responsibility. There are many other ways on how to learn about responsibility. According to an article I found titled “10 Reason Why Every Child Should Experience Farming and How to Do It” by Lilly Den Farm, he says why children should work in the farm. He says that it can teach children safety skills, the life cycle, problem solving, and have greater appreciation for food. (10 Reasons Why Every Child Should Experience Farming and How to Do It) I see that sometimes parents might want their kids to learn the tough way instead of learning the easy way. Some people might say that it is good for children to work in the farm because they might be too old to do it. All though parents might see these reasons as a major, others may think that the real issue is economic. Parents may put their kids to work in the farm because they need help economically and nobody else can help them out. Children working in the farm industry should not be allowed at all. Everyone having their own children working out there in the horrible heat should stop. The children could die and get sick. There are other ways on winning money and other ways to get help in life. It is too dangerous for children to be out there and it also damages their education.

Works Cited

Buiano, Madeline, et al. “A Push to Equalize Labor Laws for Child Farmworkers, Who Are Often Immigrants.” Center for Public Integrity, https://publicintegrity.org/business/immigration/immigration-employment/child-farmworkers-labor-laws/.

“Children in the Fields.” NFWM, http://nfwm.org/resources/children-in-the-fields/.

Holt-Gimenez, Eric. “This Land Is Whose Land? Dispossession, Resistance, and Reform in the United States.” Food Matters: a Bedford Spotlight Reader, Holly Bauer, 2nd ed., 2017, pp. 251-255.

 “10 Reasons Why Every Child Should Experience Farming and How to Do It.” Lilly Den Farm, 4 Nov. 2019, https://lillydenfarm.com/10-reasons-every-child-experience-farming/.

Marosi, Richard. “Hardship on Mexico’s Farms, a Bounty for U.S. Tables.” Food Matters: a Bedford Spotlight Reader, Holly Bauer, 2nd ed., 2017, pp.283-292.

The Harvest (La Cosecha). Directed by U. Roberto Romano, Shine Global, 2010

NCFH. “Child Labor in Agriculture.” 2008. PDF file.