Children In the Fields Campaign
Since 1997, AFOP’s Children in the Fields Campaign (CIFC) has been dedicated to ensuring that farmworker children are protected and given an opportunity to succeed in life. By educating the public, advocating for educational programs for farmworker children, and supporting fair living wages for all farmworkers.
CIFC has partnered with the Child Labor Coalition, the National Consumers League, and other concerned parties to protect farmworker children. Together, they work to publicize the plight of this hidden population and advocate for federal policies that would strengthen the child labor safeguards in agriculture so that they are just as protective as those in other industries.
As part of AFOP’s mission to serve farmworkers, AFOP formed the Children in the Fields Campaign to work on behalf of farmworker children in three areas:
- Education/Prevention
- Awareness & Advocacy
- Expression
Children In the Fields Campaign’s mission is to show America the realities our farmworker families face through the eyes of their children and to spur action to provide better educational support for our farmworker children, and prevent health hazards from working in the fields.
Our Work
Children in the Fields Campaign (CIFC) focus its work on behalf of farmworker children in the following three areas:
Education/Prevention: We give pesticide safety training to farmworker children through our interactive story-telling bilingual curriculum Jose Learns About Pesticides. We also focus trainings towards farmworker parents about take-home exposure and exposure to pesticides while pregnant. If parents don’t know the harm of pesticide exposure, they won’t protect their children properly, either.
- Awareness & Advocacy: CIFC advocates for federal policies to strengthen the U.S. child labor safeguards in agriculture by educating the public, advocating for educational programs for farmworker children, and supporting a fair living wage for all farmworkers. This is possible through our work with Child Labor Coalition and through our impact on multiple social media platforms.
- Expression: We believe farmworker children have a story to tell. We offer that platform through our annual Essay and Art Contest. The stories are used to help advocate for farmworker children’s rights. Each year we are able to collect hundreds of essays and works of art from students across the country, giving farmworker children the opportunity to showcase their heartwarming and compelling stories on the national stage and to empower them through our contests as they find the power in their voice.
What are the Minimum Age Standards for Agricultural Employment? Resource: 
However, kids even younger than 12 often accompany their parents to work on American farms and fields. This means that farmworker children are being put at risk from a very young age – even before birth – from the pesticides, dangerous equipment, and other hazards populating thos e environments. Teenagers are permitted to operate various equipment from a young age, which corresponds to an increase in the rate of tragic accidents involving youth. Though children are at the height of vulnerability when they are still in the womb, there are inadequate protections for farmworkers who are expecting a child. Children also interact with their environment in fundamentally different ways than adults, yet this is not in regulators’ minds when setting standards for things such as pesticide use.
Children are at greater health risk from pesticide exposure than adults. Pesticides have been linked to numerous health problems, including asthma, dermatitis, learning disabilities, leukemia, brain tumors and certain childhood cancers. Several factors contribute to this vulnerability. We may think of children as “little adults”, but in fact, their bodies are not fully prepared to handle toxic chemicals.
