Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
similarities make it likely that a successful intervention developed in one Ag Cen-
ter, such as a redesigned apple-picking basket in the Northeast Ag Center, would
be useful in another center's work. The AFF Program needs a formal nationally
coordinated mechanism for targeting intervention research to the highest-priority
populations and highest-priority health effects so that the program can develop,
pilot test, and evaluate appropriate interventions in an Ag Center and then expand
interventions that have the greatest potential for success on a national scale. If an
intervention has proved effective on a large scale, it needs to be aggressively dis-
seminated to stakeholders through all available channels (such as trade and labor
associations, publications, presentations, and extension agents), not merely posted
on the National Agriculture Safety Database in the hope that employers and work-
ers will visit the NIOSH Web site to search for solutions. The North American
Guidelines for Children's Agricultural Tasks seem to be a good model for this kind
of systematic development and rollout of an intervention, but the issues and most
effective approaches may differ from children and adult AFF workers.
Regulatory Policies
Impact of Ending Statutory and Labor Exemptions for Agriculture
New research could be conducted on the safety impact of ending the long-
standing statutory exemptions for agriculture under the Fair Labor Standards Act
and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. As demonstrated by the remarkable
success of Pacific and Northwest agriculture, in which all but a few of those exemp-
tions have been superseded by state laws, there is a serious question of whether
American agriculture would be harmed by abolishing the federal exemptions.
NIOSH is uniquely positioned to compare state-level workplace regulations and
safety outcomes with the corresponding performance of each state's farming sec-
tor. The much more limited exemptions for small forestry and fishing operations
can also be examined.
New research could be conducted on the effect of ending child labor exemp-
tions for agriculture. The General Accounting Office (GAO; now the Government
Accountability Office) reports that there are compelling reasons to question regu-
lations that exempt hired and unpaid family child workers in agriculture while
children in all other industries are protected (GAO, 1998). Rather than continue
its piecemeal approach of seeking corrections to various specific hazardous orders
that apply to child workers, the AFF Program can focus on new research to examine
the effects of eliminating statutory exemptions for hired and unpaid family child
workers in agriculture. Research shows that nearly one-fourth of child farm injuries
were among immediate family members, and at least one-third of these injured
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