Tom Young

I was one of "Tobacco's Hidden Children."

That's the title of a new Human Rights Watch report that says no child under age 18 should be allowed to do work that involves contact with tobacco in any form. Though I admire the things Human Rights Watch has done around the world, I must respectfully disagree this time.

Before I started first grade, I started working in the tobacco fields on my family's farm in North Carolina. Under my parents' watchful eyes, I drove a tractor pulling a trailer while older boys and men picked tobacco leaves at harvest time. My brother and I also chopped weeds. We walked behind our father's plow, digging out any tobacco plants that the plow accidentally covered with dirt. We "topped" tobacco, breaking out the plant's white flowers. We helped hang the tobacco in curing barns. We packed the cured tobacco in burlap sheets to take it to market.

Lessons in hard work

Between school years, our summers were filled with a different kind of education: how to get a job done, how to take responsibility, how to run a family business. When our father didn't need us at home, we helped other farmers and earned pocket cash that we spent on things like bicycles and fishing rods. We worked our butts off, and both of us grew up to become college-educated professionals, as did many of our peers.

This background of hard work continues to pay dividends — even in my writing. A character in my latest novel, Sand and Fire, was also one of tobacco's hidden children, and that experience informs the way he goes about his work as a Marine.

Don't get me wrong: I don't recommend smoking. It'll kill you. But handling tobacco leaves never hurt me by giving me nicotine poisoning, as the Human Rights Watch report warned. I never experienced it and never saw anyone else suffer from it.

The report points out numerous hazards associated with tobacco farming. Many of the hazards mentioned in the report can be mitigated with plain old common sense. We certainly knew about heat exhaustion. "If you start to feel dizzy," my father would say, "get in the shade and drink some water. Don't get back in the field until you feel better."

The report also discusses how tobacco workers sometimes use sharp tools and work around machinery. Well, yeah. I learned to be careful, and I developed mechanical comprehension that came in handy years later in military aviation.

Today, we know more about health risks than we did in the 1970s and the '80s, when I spent my summers in the fields. Yes, kids should stay out of the fields when chemicals are being sprayed. And I probably should have worn sunblock.

Child labor laws

Child labor can take many forms. It's one thing for someone to work as a migrant laborer year-round; kids have no place in that environment. But it's an entirely different thing to work alongside your parents, or to go help your neighbor down the road.

Anytime kids do the same work as adults, there's reason for caution, and I don't fault Human Rights Watch for pointing that out. Many farm tasks carry inherent risks. Managing those risks comes as a normal part of rural life — a culture increasingly disconnected from an American society that's increasingly urban. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, farm and ranch families now make up only 2% of the U.S. population.

The report, however well-intentioned, represents this disconnect, which carries policy implications: How can lawmakers at local, state and federal levels regulate agricultural practices they don't understand?

And the implications go beyond tobacco. Many of the old tobacco farms are converting to other crops, and farm kids — the few who are left — will convert, too. But manageable risks will remain; farmers use chemicals and machinery to produce everything from strawberries to steak.

It's a way of life that's fast becoming extinct, for reasons that have as much to do with economics as health. And I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.

Tom Young's latest novel, Sand and Fire, will be released July 10.

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