Agricultural work is the most hazardous and grueling area of employment open to children in the United States.3 It is also the least protected. Hundreds of thousands of children and teens labor each year in fields, orchards, and packing sheds across the United States. They pick lettuce and cantaloupe, weed cotton fields, and bag produce. They climb rickety ladders into cherry orchards, stoop low over chili plants, and "pitch" heavy watermelons for hours on end. Many begin their work days—either in the fields or en route to the fields—in the middle of the night. Twelve-hour workdays are common. This report documents a wide range of troubling practices
some legal under current, inadequate domestic law, some blatantly illegal
that affect juvenile farmworkers. Most of these practices affect adult workers too. It is the widespread exploitation of adult workers, in fact, that contributes to the precarious situation of their sons and daughters who also must work in the fields.