[ipnon]

This sounds quite sinister but it was a common summer job in Iowa for teenagers. You could make enough in a summer to buy a used car. Because of immigration these jobs are not really available for citizens anymore. I haven't heard of any teenagers taking this work in some time. You had to work long hours in the sun and heat but it was "an honest day's work."

[emidoots]

Teenagers young and older are definitely still working on fields here in the US[0], and also a good portion now work the processing facilities instead[1][2].

Whether it qualifies as 'an honest day's work' these days - or a cruel and punishing existence - I'll leave for you to decide.

[0] https://youtu.be/41vETgarh_8?si=S0dBolFjv04SSprh&t=497

[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/09/25/1201524399/child-labor-perdue...

[2] https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/whd/whd20230217-1

[ipnon]

It's a good point. I'm speaking of high school who are allowed to legally work in the state of Iowa. If a 16 year old willfully employing themself in an entry level job is considered exploitative child labor to you, I don't know what to say. One sad effect of the changes in labor in the state is that only citizens are beholden to labor laws, whereas those working under the table are not. So it's true there is child labor. The families and farm companies break the law because they still make more than they would back home, but it's less pay than what they are owed under the law, and the parents will lie about their child's age so they can begin working a few years earlier than they are allowed. It causes a cycle of poverty because the kids get used to the farm and they miss out on proper schooling.

[emidoots]

In Iowa, it is legal for (US citizen) children as young as the age of 12 to work on farms, for an unlimited number of hours, so long as their parents grant permission and they do not miss school. They have so far been unsuccessful at legislating to raise the age limit from 12 to 14[0] as the Children's Act for Responsible Employment act has failed to pass, due to strong opposition from agricultural industry groups.

Many of these children are pressured into it by parents who have no other financial options, as described in the video I linked above.

[0] https://www.iowapublicradio.org/news-from-npr/news-from-npr/...

[elevation]

I'm not in AG but I'd like to relax the current restrictions on juvenile labor. If 12 year olds can work on the family farm, why not let them legally work elsewhere?

As a 12 year old tech enthusiast I would have been thrilled to work a few hours a week for the Geek Squad. Or I could have worked at a small business entering invoices into Quickbooks, answering the phone, or running the till. I wouldn't even have minded pushing a broom at the pizza place nearby if it'd come with an employee discount!

As it was, all I could do was cut grass -- which is not safer, or more educational, or as profitable for me as some of those other jobs would have been.

[magic_smoke_ee]

It's working "perfectly" for the benefit of around a million heartless, horrible people based on the exploitation of a few million others.

> New York Times investigative journalist Hannah Dreier has interviewed more than 100 migrant children working in violation of child labor laws across 20 states.

>

> "I talked to a 12-year-old girl in Alabama who was working overnight stamping auto parts. I talked to a 12-year-old in Florida who came to this country and the next day was put to work roofing houses," Dreier says.

>

> Dreier met one 13-year-old boy in Michigan who worked 12-hour shifts at an egg farm, six days a week. "He told me that really he wanted to go to school, but he hadn't understood how expensive things were in this country," she says.

>

> Dreier estimates that some 250,000 children have crossed into the U.S. without their parents in the last two years, and that the majority of them wind up working full-time jobs.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1173697113/immigrant-child-la...

[7bit]

The will is there, but not the experience to know that the pay is ridiculous. People often think that kids and teenagers don't need to earn much, but they do the same job as a 40 year old would. However, the 40-year olds know that the pay is bad, that's why these positions are open to and taken by teenagers.

"Willfully" is such a toxic word to use here. Did you know that prostitutes also do that willfully? Do you think that's a fair assessment to make?

[cybercity]

Americans should be deeply ashamed of themselves if they think it is okay to have 16 year olds do field labour. The bar just keeps getting lower.

[mystified5016]

No, this is how farm work has been for the last several thousand years. Even with the poor state of the US education system, most of us understand that.

[hollerith]

No thanks.

[DontchaKnowit]

There is nothing wrong with this...

[bitbuilder]

Likewise it reminded me of my first summer job growing up in rural northern Illinois in the 80s: detasseling corn [1]. It was just something we pretty much all did, starting in Jr. High. So, if my math is correct, starting at around 12 or 13. The whole thing was managed via our school counselors, and they even used school buses to haul us out to the fields.

In the years I was doing it we all just lined up on one end of the field and walked the length of it pulling the tassles from the top of every stalk of corn. We started before dawn, soaked in the dew of the fields and freezing cold. And we ended early afternoon, soaked in sweat.

Pretty messed up in hindsight, though I can't say I've spent too much time thinking about it over the years. The only real lasting impact it's had on me is a crippling fear of grasshoppers, after being swarmed by them a few times in the fields.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detasseling

[UncleOxidant]

I worked in strawberry & bean fields (as well as bucking hay) in Oregon when I was a teen in the 70s. It was really common then to work a couple of summers to save up for a used car or for college money.

> Because of immigration these jobs are not really available for citizens anymore. I haven't heard of any teenagers taking this work in some time

I don't think immigration was what killed those jobs for citizen teens. I think it was more like rising prosperity such that they didn't want to do those jobs anymore. I can recall teens regularly canvassing the neighborhood in the 90s asking if we wanted our lawn mowed. But that stopped by around 2000. It's unheard of now. Immigration didn't stop them from doing that, it was more of a cultural shift that caused them not to desire to do that kind of work anymore.

[and sure, immigrants have taken over the lawn maintenance field, but their prices aren't cheap - most of them charge a few $hundred just to start service which is generally in the $200/month range now where I'm at. Teens could undercut these prices easily and still do well, but they don't seem interested]

[jonfw]

If you think lawn care is expensive now, you’d think it was crazy expensive if the labor was only done by citizens!

Teens would be much more likely to mow lawns if the lawn care market had more money in it.

[UncleOxidant]

Teens (and tweens) used to do the bulk of the lawn care that homeowners didn't do themselves. I don't think we'll ever get back to that even if all of the immigrants were to be deported. They're just not interested in doing this kind of work anymore.

[wrp]

Picking strawberries in Oregon was my first job, and I progressed through the usual things kids did for money then, so I know where you're coming from. However, there is a major economic change we also need to consider. It used to be you could earn enough over the summer to buy a usable car or pay college tuition. Can a kid even come close to that now? If those jobs can no longer benefit kids to the same degree, avoiding them might actually be the most rational choice. I say this even though I appreciate the diligence I see in young people who had some early experience of working.

[wakawaka28]

Moneywise, the jobs could make sense for workers if we didn't import so much from other countries (fruits, veggies, and products). The same applies to construction and lawn work. Is it better for these kids to be driving for Doordash or working at McDonalds or something than working outside? For young people especially, I think the answer is no. But we all know that most people prefer to work inside an air-conditioned building if possible, even if the job actually pays less than picking strawberries or whatever.

[DontchaKnowit]

It does though. Its quite lucrative...

[BenFranklin100]

Wait, seriously, teenagers no longer mow lawns in the neighborhood for extra cash? I did that all the time as a teenager. I sound like a grumpy Boomer.

[projectileboy]

I live in Minnesota. I hear what you’re saying, but I would say two things: in general, teenagers here are not being somehow denied farm work that they really want but is unavailable; and there’s a pretty big difference between Minnesota/Iowa summer heat and picking cantaloupes in inland California. The big difference being about 20 degrees on average, with more sun.

[dredmorbius]

Hotter in California perhaps, but far more humid in the Midwest.

85F / 90% humidity is probably more taxing than 100F / 30% RH.

[nozzlegear]

> This sounds quite sinister but it was a common summer job in Iowa for teenagers. You could make enough in a summer to buy a used car.

Yeah, I got my first job working on a family dairy when I turned 14. It was tough work, especially having to wake up at 3:30am on the weekends to go work outside in negative temperatures over the winters. It did help me purchase my first car and other things that my friends either couldn't afford or had to have their parents buy for them.

[mmooss]

Is dairy work in Minnesota the same as picking watermelons in the desert? These are all different jobs, not really comparable.

[AnimalMuppet]

Outside in negative (i.e., below 0 F) temperatures at 3:30 in the morning? That's a lot like picking watermelons in the desert, except in the opposite direction. Cold rather than hot, but still quite dangerous conditions.

[hitekker]

It's definitely true that early farm employment can deprive children of opportunity, and cause a knock-down effect on their education. Your naysayers are right to cite how exploitative these illegal farming employments are.

But the rest of the reaction seems a little out of place. Maybe it's a major culture difference: we're mostly cosmopolitan white collars with luxury time & luxury salaries, and they're our rural countrymen working with their hands and having to make ends meet.

Is it our place to judge them so harshly?

[begueradj]

A quick look at the profiles of teenagers on TikTok, Instagram and OnlyFans make me believe they have the physical and mental strength and will to work long hours in the sun in maybe the most physically taxing work ever: farm work.

[ipnon]

It's not that it's physically difficult. You don't have to lift very heavy or have much knowhow other than how to remove a husk from a corncob. But it's incredibly toilsome and boring. You get bussed out from your city or town for a few hours to the middle of nowhere. You bring a gallon of water and don your hat for shade. Then you trudge along endless rows of corn, husking and husking. The corn literally goes as far as your eye can see. You do this from sun up to sun down. Then you go home and shower and pass out in bed, wake up a couple hours before dawn and do it again. My friends, I wouldn't see them for months! They would disappear during June and July and reappear a few thousand dollars richer, usually having lost a lot of weight and with a roasted tan.

[mmooss]

> It's not that it's physically difficult.

The OP very strongly disagrees, as do other descriptions I've read.

People here are talking about all farm work as the same thing; I think that betrays complete ignorance.

[potato3732842]

I'm sorry, but this hand wringing is just a joke.

Farm work ain't great. It's repetitive and rarely if ever ergonomic. There's plenty of reasons anybody who can do something more skilled or better paid does. But it's way less taxing than just about any job where the tool used is a shovel or sledgehammer.

Yeah, if your frame of reference is skilled work or office work it all sucks but there's very much degrees to it.

[mmooss]

If you ridicule people, does it enhance or reduce your credibility? Does it make your argument stronger or weaker?

[begueradj]

Quoted and copy/pasted:

"Health conditions occurring more frequently among farmers in comparison with non-farmers were hypertension and other cardiovascular disorders as well as ear-nose-throat (ENT) and orthopaedic problems."

[blitzar]

Tell them it is a content farm and they will pay you for the summer.

[astrange]

I hope you're not finding teenagers on OnlyFans, that sounds illegal.

[7bit]

You can be a model on OnlyFans starting at 18 years.

[astrange]

Not that I spend a lot of time thinking about the definition of "teenager", but I always thought it implied you were a minor. That's what "young adult" is for.

[aaomidi]

Working on a farm and only fans both are effectively selling your body.

Which one pays more?

[7bit]

An honest day's work, doing hard labour and getting paid merely nothing in comparison. Teenager's are often used because they lack the experience of what a job should pay. If I think back to the jobs I took and the money I earned, my hard work was never appreciated. Neither on a human level nor financially. But I was shouted at for the tiniest mistakes.

[cpach]

Are you sure you have the direction of causation right there?

[magicalhippo]

Here in Norway it seems to be a combination. During the COVID-19 pandemic, farmers couldn't get their usual seasonal workers from other countries and it was touted as a great thing for the young generation as they could now "finally" get a summer job again.

Well, turned out a lot of the young generation didn't like the hours or the pay, and if they dud show up on time they worked at a fraction of the speed of the usual "imported" workers.

Was quite a bit of ruckus in the news about this, as farmers failed to get their crops harvested.

Not that I would have done much better, it's fairly brutal, monotonous work.

[ipnon]

Well, respectfully speaking, if you have more firsthand knowledge of this industry than I do, and have a point to make other than merely calling my experience in the subject in to question, then I will entertain that I might have things backward. But I suspect between the two of us, I know more about it than you do, because I've been in the fields myself.

[throwaway984393]

The jobs are available for citizens. But they don't do them. And it's not because of immigration. Think about it for more than 5 seconds. They could just stop immigration for migrant workers and suddenly give citizens jobs. Every politician wants to be known as a job creator. But they don't. Why? There is not enough workers here. Proof? COVID. They stopped letting migrant workers in and farms failed left and right from lack of workers.

We weren't lacking teenagers. We were lacking a dirt cheap seasonal exploitable massive workforce. There are not enough teens even if we conscripted them all. And if you don't, teens don't like doing work. Most teens don't live in the sticks anymore. And (for teens) we care about these stupid things like safety, a minimum wage, and labor laws.

It's not 1950 anymore. The world has changed. The reason we need migrant workers is WalMart. Their demand for ever lower prices creates the need for the lowest priced highest supply scalable labor due to a global supply chain and pricing pressure. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. Want cheap shit? Then you hire migrant workers. Or give up on farms and buy from overseas. Or make robots that can pick fruit. There's no free lunch.

[dredmorbius]

US ag labour has rarely functioned in a free-market fashion.

Through 1864, roughly half of the ag states used slave labour.

California, nominally a free state, had developed (under Spanish and Mexican rule) using what was effectively slave native labour. Following statehood, ag labour was largely imported: from China in the 19th century, from Mexico and Japan in the 20th, with the Bracero programme (established in WWII), and of course Oakies during the dustbowl as immortalised in Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, all of whom were at best severely politically marginalised. Conditions in the antebellum former Confederacy long disadvantaged labour as well.

The US National Labour Relations Act (NLRA, 1935) explicitly excluded farm labor from its protections (wages, hours, conditions, unions). California eventually pased the Agricultural Labour Relations Act (ALRA) forty years later, which provided for the right to unionise (Cesar Chavez and the National Farm Workers Association features strongly in promoting this), and ... even it is fairly weak sauce despite being the only significant ag labour law in the US.

Farming itself is a marginal business, and farm labour gets the short side of that stick. The underlying economic reasons are complex, and not readily solved. It's not that the present situation is fair to farm workers at all, but a sudden shift would likely be catastrophic across the board. I'd like to see a far fairer system, but it would take significant governance and management to roll out smoothly.

[mmooss]

> It's not 1950 anymore. The world has changed.

Per the OP, the US needed migrant workers in the 1960s and before that - the OP is about a failed experiment in replacing migrant workers.