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equipment, or care for their 4-H animals on a farm unless their parents owned it. As worded, children wouldn't be able to work in an office on a second floor since it is higher than six feet above the ground. Moreover, only children of parents who are sole proprietors or sole operators of farms would be exempt. Thus, if the farm is technically owned by grandparents and operated by their children, the grandchil- dren who live on the farm couldn't do work there except as permitted by other provisions of the law. If the farm is a part- nership or is held as a corporation or an LLC, even if it is a family operation, children in the family may be restricted in the work they can do. "When the family farm exemptions to youth labor regulations were written into law in 1937, Congress clearly intended that farm families should make their own deci- sions relative to age appropriateness of work activities for their own children," Gasperini wrote in his comments to the Department of Labor. "At that time, Con- gress could not have imagined that in the twenty-first century, even smaller family farms would have moved in such large numbers to legal incorporation in order to secure some protection from the nation's ever more complex tax codes, from litiga- tion in an increasingly litigious society, for succession planning, to improve ability to leverage assets, and many more reasons…. "We do not believe Congress ever envi- sioned or intended that a brother and sis- ter, jointly managing their parents' 200-acre farm, would find it illegal to employ their own children because the land was held as a Limited Liability Corporation." While officials at the Department of Labor have denied the intent to interpret the law so literally, Gasperini and others fear "enforcement creep" if the rules are passed as they are worded. Farm-learned lessons Gasperini cites himself as an example of how people come to know the farm way of life, including a work ethic. As a rural nonfarm kid, he said, he was able to "pitch in and help" on farms where his farm friends lived. Without that experience, he said, he never would have taken a college degree in agronomy and made a career in agriculture. In recent years, enforcers prosecuted farms where children of employees—especially migrant worker employees—have "pitched in" to help their parents. "Youth represent the future of agricul- ture and of America," Gasperini wrote. "Youth must be protected, educated, trained, mentored, and offered meaning- ful early work experience opportunities, both in order to allow informed career planning and to provide income opportu- nities. In rural areas, agriculture may pro- vide the only youth work/income opportunities available. Not every young person in America has the luxury of unlimited family income to allow them to pursue educational and career opportu- nities without income-generating work opportunities. www.goodfruit.com The most potent codling moth virus...ever. "With fewer and fewer people directly engaged in agriculture, an early employ- ment experience is increasingly the motivation for young people entering col- lege programs in farming, food processing and marketing, landscaping, horticulture, and other agricultural disciplines so important to the future, and the well-being of the American people." • High Potency CYD-X® HP [] ©2012 Certis USA www.CertisUSA.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER JANUARY 1, 2012 23