On the recordFebruary 17, 2012
if the Senator will yield on that point, what the Senator has touched upon I think is something that perhaps people who don't come from farm country don't appreciate as much as we do, and that is just the very nature of farming. Farming is, as we said, very much a family operation. What we are talking about right now with these regulations is, at a time when we have young people who want and need the opportunity to learn responsibility, who need to learn the value of hard work as well as, for that matter, earn a little extra spending money, this regulation would restrict their ability to do all three. It would be really bad for family farming and ranching in the State of South Dakota. I know that. It is also a regulation that I would say I don't think has gotten as much attention perhaps as some of the other ones that are out there but one that would have profound consequences on production agriculture. The Senator mentioned a couple of examples of operating farm equipment. If a person is on a tractor, that person probably, in most cases, would be higher than 6 feet, and this regulation would prevent them from doing things at elevations higher than 6 feet. We could also argue some other things that would fall into that category. How about working on a haystack? A farmer is going to be more than 6 feet above the ground.…
