Farmers overwhelmed by DOL’s 3,000 pages of new rules

Apr 29, 2024

By Farms.com

The U.S. Department of Labor has added another 600 pages to its list of rules for farmers, reaching a staggering total of 3,000 pages in the last 18 months. This volume of regulations is raising significant concerns within the agricultural community regarding the feasibility and justification of such measures.

Expressing the sector's frustrations, Zippy Duvall, President of the American Farm Bureau Federation, criticized the latest rule for its broad assumptions about farmer conduct and the impractical burden it places on agricultural employers. Duvall emphasized that while the intention to protect farm workers from abuse is universally supported, the approach taken by the DOL is overwhelming and presumes wrongdoing across the board.

Farmers are finding themselves in a difficult position, needing to hire legal experts to decipher the dense and continuous flow of new regulations. This situation not only increases operational costs but also diverts resources from farming to compliance management.

The challenge now lies in reconciling the need for worker safety and rights with the practical capacities and rights of farmers. The agricultural community is advocating for a more balanced regulatory approach that considers the operational realities of farming.

As the Department of Labor plans further regulations, it faces growing calls from the agricultural sector to consider the cumulative impact of its policies and strive for regulations that are both fair and manageable.

Video: Western Canadian Agriculture: Hard Times Made the World's Best Farmers

Western Canadian agriculture produced the most advanced farmers in the world not through abundance but through adversity. The crow rate fell. The wheat price went nowhere. The brown envelopes stopped.

When the subsidies disappeared, the bad farmers left and the good ones stayed. And the ones who stayed could not just grow wheat anymore. They started growing lentils and canola and peas and flax and faba beans. They built crop rotation. They got serious about agronomy because there was no government backstop. That process produced the Western Canadian agriculture Dennis Bulani describes in this clip: the most advanced, most educated farming culture in the world.

His contrast with Iowa corn and soybean farmers is sharp. At a DeKalb farmer meeting in Okoboji, Iowa, he asked what crop rotation they ran. Beans on corn stubble, corn on bean stubble. How do you fertilize? The co-op agronomist handles it. Have you considered other crops? No need. We make so much money on corn and soybeans. Western Canadian agriculture was never allowed that comfort. And now those Iowa farmers are watching soybean markets lock up with China and corn prices slide, and they do not have the agronomy knowledge or the research base to pivot. Western Canadian farmers adapted on a dime because they had done it before.

Dennis also makes the case that Western Canadian agriculture keeps adapting in real time. Low commodity prices over the past year have pushed growers to look seriously at precision spot-spray technology. He knows a neighbor who bought a sprayer with the seeing-eye system and sprayed only 80 out of 320 acres. As a chemical retailer Dennis acknowledges that will affect his sales. He supports it anyway, because if it advances Canadian agriculture and makes farmers money, that is a good outcome.

The lesson Dennis draws from the tale of two farms: continuous improvement is the only durable strategy. When canola was $22 a bushel some growers went to Arizona instead of the Crop Production Show. When the price came down those same growers came back to the research and the discipline. Products do not go on Rack Petroleum's shelves unless they pass a replicated trial first. That is what Western Canadian agriculture built through hard times: farmers who do the work whether the times demand it or not.

Dennis Bulani is CEO of Rack Petroleum and Ultimate Yield in Biggar, Saskatchewan. Dan Aberhart hosts GTF Productions, Western Canadian Agriculture's foremost live briefing platform and its foremost AI training platform for ag operators