http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/ … 8-08-24-10
The Ag Secretary lays it out.
Of course this goes along with the progressive vision of cities and rural areas.
We are just the flyover states.
The government is making it difficult for farms to be kept in the family. They want farm children to have drivers licenses in order to run the equipment - CDL's. They also want the children to be 18 in order to work on the farm for any type of farm work. The family farm will be disappearing so the government can control and regulate what is grown. The government already pays farmers NOT to grow food. It's a sad state of affairs which is only going to be getting worse.
I get a kick out of when you get told these are "conspiracy theories " and the like.
They have basically gone into full blown class warfare and they are targeting the rural Americans and the conservative wealthier people who do not share their Marxist vision of where they want the nation to go.
It is debatable how far to take it, but these regulation came from a pretty high number of deaths of children riding farm bikes and equipment. I don't think the motivation was to harass rural people, but to reduce deaths of children.
You shouldn't need a CDL to run a tractor.
It's not an 18 wheeler and it's not rocket science.
But go ahead and regulate them for they are too stupid to know better right?
I was asking for a reason why a tractor is not a commercial vehicle, or is not a dangerous one.
It's not an 18 wheeler and it's not rocket science either, but there is more to it than most people think of.
Driving a large tractor down a paved road is not easy. They don't steer right, they're as wide as the whole lane and they often have trailers or some other rear attachment on them.
It doesn't stop there, either. Children often drive 30,000 pound truck to market down those same roads, pushing for all they're worth to get back and get another T/L. Do you really want a 13 year old that can barely see over the windshield coming at you with a fully loaded grain truck and the pedal to the metal?
It isn't the simple thing it's made out to be by the farmers. I know - I was one of those young kids plowing fields and pulling trailers loaded with 40' irrigation pipe to the next field.
I don't agree about the 'High' number of deaths of children. It's not like a 5 year old is going to run a combine by his/herself. It's because the government wants a tighter reign on the farming and ranching industry. Young farm and ranch children aren't even allowed to 'cut' the pigs or bulls. (removing their testes). Farmers and Ranchers children are brought up in a different way than non farmers and ranchers. They are taught safety first and foremost. Look around you and really see the changes that are happening in America; these are not good changes. Did you know that if you have a back yard garden that you can be either taxed on it or it will be destroyed as it is considered an Illegal Food Manufacturing Facility. Now I ask, is this right? I'm sorry, but if I want to have a garden in my back yard and raise meat rabbits I'm going to and the government will just have to 'eliminate' me before I stop doing same. The government even wants to tax private wells on peoples private property.
Hi Sarra. Good luck with the pending job.
You do not believe in the “high” number of children’s deaths on farms. So let us take a look at the numbers. They appear to confirm that psycheskinner and wilderness may be correct. More than 1 million children live on farms in the US and 27,000 of them, more than 2.7-percent, are killed or injured every year on farms and ranches. Is that not a “high” number?
I imagine CDLs are required to insure that young operators are properly trained and tested before taking control of equipment with the potential to kill. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that among all the leading sources of fatal injuries to youth on farms, a quarter involved machinery and another 20 percent involved motor vehicles. {1}
In fact, farms have been proven to be ten times more harmful for children than most other places. Approximately 14 per cent of agricultural injuries resulted in hospitalization compared with 1.4% of non-agricultural injuries. {2}
Those who think children operating tractors or other farm equipment is no big deal probably need to know that of all the machinery related deaths of children in America, 85-percentage are caused by farm machinery. {3}
Some folks choose to believe regulations are imposed because the government wants a tighter reign on the farming and ranching industry. However, the death and injury data reveals some regulations are justified because rural parents are not doing enough on their own to keep their children out of harms way.
I hope ya’all have a great weeken', y’hear.
{1} http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news … study-says
{2} http://www.medpagetoday.com/EmergencyMe … cine/31607
{3} http://ohioline.osu.edu/aex-fact/0991.html
Well you can enact the laws and there will still be accidents and death.
But any excuse to regulate......
Using that reasoning we should never have put drunk driving laws into effect, laws against texting while driving are worthless and children should be able to operate hot kitchen equipment.
Laws won't stop 100% of the accidents and so do nothing. Can't say as I agree.
Didn't say do nothing.
If there is a need fine but don't hunt for things to regulate.....which they do and you know they do.
Yes, of course, but that's the job of government (at least according to many) - to take away all freedom possible because they, and only they, know what's best for everyone. I expect Govt to promote as much regulation as it can slip by the people.
The does not mean it's all wrong, though.
Four wheel bikes alone cause a lot of deaths. And some would argue even a few is too many if it is avoidable. But it's a trade off and while regulator tend to see regulation as the answer to anything, all I was saying is that the motive was a good one--whether you agree with the outcome or not. If you acknowledge that a constructive compromise is more likely versus seeing it as a malicious attack. Farmers should not be over-regulated, but no one should put convenience over the safety of their children or paid workers.
Increased regulation tends to follow a loss of public trust. The farm bureaus are pushing back on it and they have very good funding and lobbyists. So it is not exactly a one-sided disagreement.
This has nothing to do with the thread, but one little comment here is so sad. True, but so sad.
"The farm bureaus are pushing back on it and they have very good funding and lobbyists. So it is not exactly a one-sided disagreement."
It's not a one sided disagreement, not because there is truth and facts on both sides, but because there is money and lobbyists on both sides.
Sorry for stealing the thread.
I don't really know what a "farm bike" is but kids don't have to live on farms to ride motocross and ATV vehicles. There is no reason to license a kid to drive a tractor because no one else has to have license to drive a tractor. A kid in town can put on a pair of roller blades, slip and crack his head open. Honestly.
Those who don't live on farms should just be quiet. Around here, KS, you can see 10-12 year old's running combines and driving tractors. As long as they're on their parent's land - no big deal. Very few kids (percentage wise) get hurt on farm equipment. I think it's probably riskier to play football.
The govt. should keep it's nose out of the family farm. Farmers won't take it forever. At some point, they'll quit selling their grain and produce on the markets and sell it themselves, thereby avoiding all the silly regulations.
The govt. is protecting GMO - 'nuff said.
I started this forum because the Ag Secretary said the rural areas were becoming irrelevant.
Irrelevant.
So I guess they plan on plowing up Central Park and planting and growing the food for Manhattan, I don't know. Farmers and those who have other countryside land and such are hardly irrelevant.
However, no one spoke about that it just went straight into this screed about how many children get hurt on farm equipment.
I did grown up on a farm, and for use farm bikes where 3-4 four wheeled vehicle large enough to carry a bail of hay or a sheep. And the kids being killed on them were farm kids, at a rate I am pretty sure was higher than for sports during the 90s when these vehicles became popular. And the weekend safety report almost always includes and under 14 killed on a farm bike, on a farm.
No one wants to be regulated. But the regulations are coming due to a cascade of issues. For example the agricultural sector rejecting a national animal identification system. If you can't trace diseased product to its source, the next option is inspecting everyone. These days if you don't have organized self-regulation, you end up with Federal regulation.
That's actually the govt. that's rejecting animals ID and testing. Google "Creekstone Farm." They tried to test every one of their head of cattle - to keep Japan as a buyer, but the USDA sued them. Made them stop. The USDA is in bed with big corporate farmers. These regulations only hurt the little family farm. We should resist regulation unless it's for a good reason. For example, there is already a law that restricts selling ATVs to minors. You will still find kids on them every Sunday at the local motocross tracks. Kids get hurt but you can't legislate everything. Look at how many young black males die from black-on-black crime. Many, many more than farm kids in accidents. We can make changes by helping - or by hindering. But every time we hinder someone - we all lose a little bit more.
And actually we didn't have our way with Bush.
And NO!
We are not going to just sit down and shut up.
Get in through your head.
Weird - you think starting numerous forum threads from behind a fake user name is a better alternative than actually doing something?
Guess they win then.
The USDA wanted the identification system, it was the farm lobby that stopped them.
When I googled Creekstone farm all I found was a settlement against them for not paying their workers.
And I don't know why gang violence makes it okay for people to put their children at risk of death on unstable vehicles. That's like saying because my neighbor killed his wife it's okay for me to beat mine.
I don't see anything wrong with these regulations. Why should these kids be forced to work on their parents' farms? I really bet they don't want to be out there in the first place. If the parents want free labor, too bad.
I don't think they are "forced" the way you are implying. Do you have kids?
If you do you require them to do anything around the house or yard?
The difference is?????????
Spot on. There is absolutely nothing wrong with "forcing" kids to help out on a farm. It can be abused, yes, and the farm turned into a child level sweat shop, but in general it is not only not harmful but is good for kids to learn to work. To learn that the things they want don't come from Big Daddy in DC but from the fruits of their own labor.
Well that's the whole point of the forum.
Regulations are regulations but it gets ridiculous.
Farming parents are fully capable of teaching their kids how to do it right.
"Farming parents are fully capable of teaching their kids how to do it right."
While most farmers understand how to work safely (not all - the injury rate on farms is very high) and will pass the knowledge to their children, not all do a very good job. Teaching safety is far more than saying "don't do this" or "don't do that" and few farmers have been trained themselves in either safety or the teaching of it. Rather, they pass along their years of experience, when they think of it, and if their own actions aren't buried so deep in automatic responses that they don't even consider someone might do something wrong.
If that statement was correct it would far more valuable than all the laws we could pass and we wouldn't have kids being hurt on the farm. They aren't being taught, though, and society thinks it has a duty to protect small children from either uncaring OR ignorant parents.
So more enlightened people need to oversee this right?
Given that kids are being injured and killed working on farms, it is fairly obvious that the farmers aren't doing the job.
Who else would you suggest? Personally I very often found the suggestions and requirements of OSHA inspectors to be far removed from reality and cannot suggest that farm work be added to their duties. I don't know of anyone else even faintly "enlightened" enough, so maybe we should deny young children the "right" to do unsupervised farm work around machinery.
I don't know, I just know that kids are being hurt and killed and that doing nothing will not reduce those numbers. Is our desire for cheap food from small farms worth the cost we're paying?
Hey well let's just give it over to Washington and they can get together a new Secretary and new cabinet post and we can lock down the farmlands and only qualified personnel can go and work there.
Because that's the eventuality of what is happening. Regulate away.
Barefoot, I hate regulations at least as much as you do. The only difference is that I am willing to accept them where necessary.
You have consistently said that regulating farm children's ability to work the farm should not be regulated, but have offered no other solution. Are the levels of child injuries and deaths acceptable, then? They will obviously never be zero, regulations or not - are current levels OK?
If not, bashing an attempt to lower them without providing counter proposals seems a little counter-productive.
I've never seen a farmer that keeps the safety interlocks on his equipment in good working order - they all remove such things as wasteful and time consuming and it's a part of why kids are injured. Should we require periodic inspections, just as we do other businesses? Should we require written safety manuals, with training schedules? Should we test kids as to their knowledge of farm safety? Should we set a minimum age, perhaps 16, to operate machinery?
If not regulations preventing work, what can we do?
And Big Daddy DC would love nothing better than to take over the farming.......
and move "people" to the cities.
Sorry - I still haven't seen where laws to protect children or others from those same children means that govt. wants farms to fail.
I'm sure that if all the small farms went bankrupt and were taken over by large farming businesses that the farming business in general would become more efficient and productive, but I'm not sure that would be a good thing.
I wasn't saying bankrupt. I was saying govt. farming. So is Habee.
I understand that, but why would a small farmer quit if he can make a living there? Most farmers have the soil in their veins, so to speak - it is their life. They won't quit voluntarily - bankruptcy is about the only thing that will drive them off the farm.
Wildman, one thing I don't like about many huge commercial farming operations is how the animals are treated. Our cattle were "free range," with hundreds of acres of pastures, woods, streams, and ponds. They didn't spend their entire lives in crowded feed lots on concrete.
Our cattle are in the photo below. That pasture has a pond at the far end, and the cows use it for cooling off in the summer. Beyond the pond are some shady woods.
I think as a whole, we're losing our connection to the land. Many "city folk" have no idea where food really comes from. They don't know or don't care about the amount of suffering that went into that nicely packaged ground beef at the supermarket. Yes, I'm a meat-eater, but I still care about how meat animals are treated - while they're alive AND when it's time for them to be killed. I think big government farms would largely remove the human aspect from farming. They'd be concerned only with figures and profits.
Well on a normal family farm they are treated well. I have even known families that named as many of them as they could and when they were working out with them would talk to them and make soothing sounds.
Yes clearly we need to regulate the poo out of that right?
Oh, I fully agree, habee. That's why I say the giant farms are more productive and efficient but also go on to say that it still might not be a good thing.
I have to say, though, that the smaller dairy farms around me with a hundred dairy cows or so, were organized more on the level of what you're talking about. 100 head of cattle crammed into maybe 50 acres is a far cry from what you're describing; even the smaller operations are going the way of productivity and any cost. It's the only way they can compete, but I don't have to like it and don't.
It's amazing, isn't it, the lack of knowledge of the city folk? Food comes from grocery store shelves, not from some farmer digging holes in the soil. It just kind of grows there, bottles and all I guess.
Free? 18 years of feeding and clothing ain't free.
I can't believe you said that. But then again everyone is entitled to their own opinion. When America was being developed, and other countries, they had a large number of children so the farm would be successful. It takes a lot of work and people to run a farm. If we didn't have agriculture you wouldn't eat.
I grew up on a self sufficient farm wherein we only went to the grocery store ONCE a year. Everything else we grew, canned, butchered, scraped etc. This was an experience I will cherish and so don't other farm children.
I'd really go on but the last time I did I was banned from HP for 3 days. So I'll end with this. When you sit down to eat your salad or steak just think of where it came from.......it just didn't appear at the grocery store.
Without farms and farmers you wouldn't be eating.
I was part of a big farming/ranching family when I was married to my ex. Every year there were more government regulations. Family farms are a dying breed, and that's a real shame. I think that eventually, the government will have complete control of all food production. I find that pretty scary.
Now you are getting it....
Habee we were both raised in the South and have been around farms and did you ever know anyone with more common sense?
Nope. Most of them are "salt of the earth" types. I enjoyed the farming/ranching aspect. After the ex and I divorced and I remarried, hubby and I bought a mini-farm in a remote rural area. We had a huge garden, chickens, rabbits, goats, horses, ducks, a bull, and lots of dogs and cats. Oh, we also had fruit and nut trees. I loved the element of self-sufficiency. I canned and froze a substantial part of our food.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be safety regulations in place, but there needs to be some common sense involved. There's a big difference in a kid's driving a big tractor on a busy road and a teenager's driving a truck at 2 mph in a hay field as the bales are loaded.
No I don't think kids should be on the road either but what is being said here is like you say....they shouldn't be working at all. That's what's being pushed.
Sorry, I got off on a tangent. lol. Back to farming regulations.
Maybe farmers and their children should have to undergo safety training every so often. Inspectors could make "surprise" visits to see if the standards are being met. That seems like a better idea than painting all farmers as unsafe and irresponsible.
It's an option, although I don't really believe that our govt. can come up with a balance between an acceptable accident rate and cost. It also runs the cost of the farm up, and so many are operating on a shoestring already.
There are other options, though, if we can help decrease the cost of farming. Or increase the cost of the finished product, but I hate the idea of govt. price controls - it's bad enough that we pay farms to sit idle or buy their products in huge quantities to keep the price up.
What if we actively promote govt research into genetically modified products? They're cheaper and easier to produce and would help farm costs. How about increased vaccinations of animals, or better vaccines? Animal waste can be a problem - what about dumping it in the county dump at reduced rates?
What are we willing to "pay" (beyond a high child accident/death rate) to keep small farms?
My husband and I were raised in rural America. I was a Maine farm kid and his family ran a fish camp in rural central Florida. It's a different world from suburbia. Farm kids don't work for expensive sneakers or fun money, we work to help the family business stay profitable. We both expected to get up at 4:30 am to help out before we went to school. Everyone did it. I drove tractors when I was big enough to reach the pedals. My husband started repairing boats at the age of five. I guess we're both lucky to be alive, the way some people talk.
Safety was the first thing we learned. It was taken seriously by everyone. First of all they loved us. Secondly accidents are expensive.
Regulations have just gone too far. The number of children (and adults) maimed or killed on ranches or farms are much lower than those who die from cancer or run over by cars driven by inattentive drivers who are talking on their cell phones or children who commit suicide due to bullying.
I'm sorry all, being a farmer myself, the government is trying to kill the family farm. These farms and ranches have been in the same families for centuries. Safety is taught to the children and certainly they are not put in a situation by their parents where the child is going to get killed. Without teaching the children about how to run the farm the farms wouldn't be running and kept in families. These folks are proud people and believe me, safety is first on a farm. In the old days, farmers couldn't afford to have their children die, the farm would die too.
Even a backyard garden is considered an illegal food manufacturing plant these days. Geez.
I think that you will find that the rate of accidents on the farm is higher than almost any other business. You will also find that the rate among children is far, far above other industries.
It's been a long time since I worked a farm as a youngster, but safety was not a high concern then (or in other businesses, either) and I doubt it has changed a great deal. OSHA and MSHA did a great deal for safety in the workplace, but not on farms, where the owner is the laborer, and as a result safety is a real concern there yet.
I hear what you're saying about farms and farmers, and I fully agree, but something needs done about the rate of children being seriously injured or killed there.
hey, barefoot, for once I agree with wilderness, there needs to be a fine balence maintained between th;e need to regulate in the interests of safety and nannyism.
Back on your main theme, what do you want to do about the fact of waning rural GOP constituency influence? The power and representation rightly belong with the greatest numbers, am I right?. This is just plain reality, the situation since the founding of the republic.
I agree with him to an extent.
It's really sad to live in a rural area like I do and basically have class warfare like this rained down on you.
The govt. through a mouthpiece in effect says they don't care about us.
You can talk waning GOP influence all you like but it is more like a growing Dem disdain.
The little people of America, the workers, the builders - those that are self sufficient to a large degree - are indeed held in disdain by the liberals of the world. They don't share the liberal vision of dependency and cannot become a part of it in any real manner.
Unfortunately, they are also held in disdain by the power mongers of the other side as well. Without large sums of money coupled to large amounts of controlling power they are nothing to those that have these things.
Those people that built the country into what it is are a disappearing breed and they will change or succumb, or so I see it.
I don't like it. I believe it will be the downfall of the country in the long run as it becomes just another third rate power in the world, bankrupt and dependent on other countries to survive, but it is what it is. Until American and Americans can learn to once more stand on their own two feet it will continue the downhill slide.
We almost have two different nations.
There is the upper East Coast and the West Coast with the Illinois/Ohio region thrown in...oh and Florida...then you have the rest mostly.
There is very little relation between the two areas ideologically, but boy do the coasts need the midsection.
Now they won't admit that but it is true.
Barefootmae, yes there are two different nations. This has been predicted in the book, GENERATIONS, THE HISTORY OF AMERICA'S FUTURE, 1584 to 2069 by William Strauss and Neil Howe. According to these authors, in the early 21st century, Americans are into two factions, the conservative/traditionalist element and the liberal element. The schism is going to be even widen as time progresses.
I think what we have is a Party that is full of itself and loaded down with hubris.
People are going to become tired of having to deal with people who do nothing but look down their nose at them. They really have no right to do that.
You have the East and West coast and who feeds those people hmmm?
You're being paranoid, Barefoot, no one is looking down at rural America, if I had a choice, that is where I would live, I live in rural Hawaii, does that count? I can drink coffee and break bread with the redest of red state residents as long as we do not discuss politics. Did not these people have their way with GW Bush and Ronald Reagan when they were in office? If I did not know better I think you would be asking that your rural folks be entitled to representation and influence not justified by their numbers. What are you suggesting? I respect rural America, but we agree to disagree ideologically.
You win some and you lose some and this time the conservatives lost, Your Romney turned his nose at a lot of valid constituencies this year, what about them? Face it, the days of American Gothic are over
He's not my Romney.
That whole meme is getting really old.
I suppose my biggest problem is learning to live under condescension and belittling which is what passes for working together for the left.
So Barefootfae,
You seem to have a lot of gripes with just about everything. What do you plan to do about it? Besides stomp your feet (no pun intended of course)?
Nine tenths of the battle nowadays is actually communicating an issue.
Lot's of this stuff never gets discussed.
Right?
Since you seem concerned about me, what would you suggest i do?
I am not concerned about you, except perhaps that your feet might be cold:) Kidding. I don't know. Maybe you just need to stop worrying so much about everything. Do some meditation and get in touch with your spiritual side. The world is going to do what it is going to do.
That's no solution.
That's wishing I would shut up.
You will find that I will speak out in support of these families who have lived and worked to feed and clothe our nation and others for many generations.
They are now being called irrelevant. They are now being disenfranchised by their government.
If there are those I would like heard from it would be John Mellencamp and willie Nelson and others who put together Farm Aid. They are big time Democrats and here is the Democrat administration dissing the people they work to support.
Wonder what they have to say??
Last year there were 113 deaths of children due to farm accidents.
Last year there were 555 deaths of children (infantcide) at the hands of their parents
Last year there were 850 deaths of children from other murders.
Gee, seems like it's safer to live on a farm.
Adjust for the percentage of the population who live on farms, and the number of those infanticides that occurred on farms, and no it isn't.
Even if it was, how does it follow that we should tolerate unnecessary risks to farm kids getall the fun of risking horrible deaths that inner city Chicago kids do. is that what we aspire to?
Everyone has an opinion which turns into discussions. I'm sorry, living on a farm and working on a farm is safer than living in a city. Not to mention farmers are nicer people, hard working people and the most down to earth people you'll ever meet in your lifetime. They work hard to produce for the masses and are proud of what they do, as it should be. When the government has to step in and pay farmers to NOT plant then raise the prices of food I have a huge problem with that. The regulations are not to prevent children from dying in farming accidents, they are to make it harder for the farmer. Our current regiem wants us all to be puppets.
Death rates are matters of statistics not opinion. And preventable deaths should drive policy. IMHO if operating the farm required a ten year old unsupervised on a piece of machinery--the farm may have bigger problems.
My folks managed to farm without putting kids on farm machinery until they were old enough to have a license. I honestly don't see how it is such a huge hardship.
because these farms are huge, 50,000 acres or more. The normal farmer can't afford to hire outside the family unit. There were more deaths 100 years ago on farms than there are now due to safety. That's why way back then there were many children on the farm, they were needed to work the farm.
What about the FFA program here in Rural America. Future Farmers of America. It's HUGE in the schools. Every year there is a tractor parade where these kids drive the combines, tractors, etc down main street and they are so proud. Safety is number one and fewer children die due to farm accidents than any other type of child deaths. If children didn't work the farm, the farm would be non exhistant as it wouldn't live on in families. There are always new ideas in safety etc. Certainly an adult is not going to allow a child under 16 to run a combine. Usually the farming accidents are just that, accidents. You don't need a CDL to drive a tractor and as far as ATV's go, most farms still use horses as it's safer to ride a horse when you are working cattle than it is an ATV.
Where do you get your stats? 23% of kids dying on farms are killed by machinery (including tractors) and 19% of deaths involve vehicles, prominently ATVs.
120 dead kids and 16000 injured a year may not seem like a lot to you, but it exceeds a great many other causes especially if you look only at kids living on farms.
Of course it is an accident but a 10 year old on an ATV in rolling country is an accident waiting to happen as they are very unsafe vehicles under those conditions. I am astounded parents allow it and perfectly okay with it being disallowed.
where do you get your stats? I've lived in Nebraska for 4 years and not one report of a child being killed in a farming accident. If you have never lived or been brought up on a farm you just don't know how they operate.
It is imperative that farmers children have the ability to work on the family farm or ranch. FFA is a wonderful organization as it teaches future farmers. Without future farmers we wouldn't have family farms.
There is absolutely no way to prevent any child from dying, either on farms or at the hands of their parents or from diseases... Same with adults. It sounds worse when a child is killed in an accident as the child never had the chance to grow up.
It's the governments way of keeping their thumb on everything which is just wrong.
I get my stats for NIOSH. That is who keeps those stats.
And there are ways to teach minor children stuff, under supervision and at low speeds. The licensing laws relate to sole operation. Most of the ATV deaths relate to minors alone flipping, running into posts at speed etc. Not doing farm work. If you minors can't joy ride on ATVs in the suburbs, I don't see why it should be legal just because they are on a farm.
I see working machinery the same as working directly with cattle. Kids don't do it alone until they have pretty much achieve adult size and sense.
show me one kid, who gets the chance to ride an ATV without the supervision of a parent that will not take the opportunity to throttle up. lol They wouldn't be normal kids. They have been taught safety but kids will be kids. It sucks when you are riding your ATV or a snowmobile for that matter and all of a sudden get beheaded from running into a barbed wire fence. It only hurts for a minute.
Hi there, Sarra.
Three days ago you declared, “I don't agree about the 'High' number of deaths of children.” Replies to you included astounding numbers with citations you could verify:
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/107055#post2280555
When asked to provide a source for your claims, you replied, “I've lived in Nebraska for 4 years and not one report of a child being killed in a farming accident.”
Here, Sarra, are still more facts with citations for your consideration:
On average, 113 youth less than 20 years of age die annually from farm-related injuries (1995 -2002), with most of these deaths occurring to youth 16-19 years of age (34%). {1}
Of the leading sources of fatal injuries to youth on U.S. farms, 23% percent involved machinery (includes tractors) and 19% involved motor vehicles (includes ATVs).{1}
In 2009, an estimated 16,100 children and adolescents were injured on farms; 3,400 of these injuries were due to farm work. {1}
There were 801 farm-related deaths in Illinois from 1986 to 2011 with 56 occurring to children age 14 or less. {2}
The Farm Fatality Summary compiled by Purdue University shows children died in Indiana in every year from 1998 to 2010. {3}
Agriculture has the second highest fatality rate among youth workers at 21.3 per 100,000 full-time equivalents compared to 3.6 per 100,000 across all industries. {4}
Between 1995 and 2000, 695 youths lost their lives in farm-related fatalities on US farms (55.8 fatalities per 100,000 youth). {4}
Young people are not the only ones at risk. The National Safety Council’s 2009 edition of Injury Facts ranks agriculture as our nation’s most dangerous industry with 28.6 deaths per 100,000 adult workers. {4}
These are verifiable facts, Sarra, whether you believe them or not.
{1} http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/aginjury/
{2} http://my.extension.uiuc.edu/documents/ … Deaths.pdf
{3} http://tristatehomepage.com/fulltext/?nxd_id=559812
{4} http://www.marshfieldclinic.org/proxy/m … 2011.1.pdf
I don't believe it is the government's goal (this administration or any other) to kill off the family farm. I do think too many people - especially politicians - will jump on a cause to bolster their popularity.
Safety awareness begins at home. I taught both of my kids to drive our tractors around the age of 12. Not at high speeds down the road, but out in the hay field so they could be raking while I was baling, or they could be baling while I picked up the hay.
Lesson number 1, which I repeated every time they drove:
"If you have to get off the tractor for ANY reason, you shut off the PTO (the power to the drive shaft that powers whatever equipment is being used) first. Why? Because it spins at 540 rpm, and will snag any loose shoelace, glove, sleeve, or pant leg. There is literally ZERO time to react, and your limb will be wrapped around that shaft 9 time within the first second. Since human limbs don't really wrap around steel shafts spinning at high rates of speed, you can imagine what would happen."
I'm proud of my kids, both adults now, in part because they never risked any foolish behavior with our equipment. On top of that, because of their help around the farm, they are two of the few people in their age group that can drive stick shift autos, push start motors, and are generally "handy." In fact, my son has received a full scholarship in engineering.
Yes, any number of kids being hurt or injured by farm equipment (or anything else) is too many. But the onus for their safety lies with their parents, and there is only so much the government should be expected to regulate.
Seems to me there's a problem with each of your examples. A loss of one child, by any means, is one too many!
If I was asked about my source I missed it and apologize humbly. However, the government wants to make it next to impossible for family farms to keep running. This is the point I am getting at. If it boils down to child labor, then Wal Mart needs to stop outsourcing to third world countries where there are no safety regulations in sweat shops.
I am just wondering how my bringing up the Ag Secretary saying the rural areas were irrelevant became a discussion about kids getting hurt or killed on farm equipment.
Is that why they are irrelevant or what?
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