Growing Up On The Farm

When citizens of advanced countries, wealthy and enlightened countries like Canada think of the great, teeming cities of India, they think also of the great endemic poverty, illness, lack of opportunities, beggars living in the streets, mass homelessness, hunger and privation.  All of which is certainly true for many undeveloped and developing countries of the world. 

They also think of the horrors of child labour where young children are conscripted to work in mines, in factories where their nimble fingers produce goods sold to countries with advanced economies.They might also think of child agricultural workers.  Children working long, hard hours at labours that present a challenge to the strength and endurance of adults. 

Of course, in advanced countries of the world agricultural work by child labour was once the norm.  When farm families had little option but to teach their young to perform vital seasonal tasks.  Farmers in the West, like those in Canada, still point to the custom of a ten-month school year, with two months off in the summer.

And those two months when school was out was the time when farm families traditionally required to have their children at home, on the farm, not attending school, but attending to tasks needing to be done on time, when produce was ripe for the picking and crops needed to be brought in before the weather turned it into inedible waste.  Cash crops brought in on time and sold for distribution brought disposable cash to pay bills and seeds for the following year.

When the farm work was completed in the fall, the young farmhands were once again transformed into schoolchildren.  And this is not a quaint custom of the past.  Not in Canada, just as it is not in India.  For in Alberta, one of the wealthiest provinces in Canada, agricultural industry labour practices are not fully regulated.  Migrant workers, and children, can be hired to perform any job on the farm that requires addressing.

"Alberta is unique in not having child labour laws apply to industrial farming operations in this country" advised the province's former Opposition leader, David Swann.According to Dr. Swan it remains common that children as young as eight will be put to work on conveyor belts, grading potatoes.  According to the Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research, 41 children under age 15 died of agriculture-related injuries between 1990 and 2009.

"By the time I was 10 years old I could drive a tractor and by 12, I was combining", said one fieldman from Taber, one of Canada's largest potato-producing areas.  As soon as his feet could touch the pedals, he began threshing wheat on heavy equipment.  "It's just how it has to be.  [Near harvest] there's a lot of work at one time for a small unit all at once.  You either have to hire, or use some of your family.  It's certainly not intended as slave labour."

But it is child labour.  And it is dangerous to the health and welfare of children.  Being helpful on the family farm is one thing; being exposed to the potential threat of harm is another altogether. To begin with, modern farms use heavy, complex mechanical machinery which can pose a threat to an adult, let alone a child.  Agriculture-related injuries to children come about through their exposure to, and use of agricultural machinery. 

Tractor roll-overs or falls from tractors were responsible for two-thirds of accidents; another third caused by drowning in huge quantities of grain.  That is plainly unconscionable.