Perhaps I can offer some insight here, having been a "child laborer" in tobacco fields myself.
First off, I think the article Michael linked to is overstating the dangers to the young people working on the tobacco farms. The only time I remember getting "nicotine sickness" was when stripping the tobacco after curing, and only on the really long work days where several wagon loads were stripped. Even then, it was mild and never enough to cause me to step away from the work.
None of us were ever asked to climb up high into the barns until we were old enough to do so safely. For one thing your legs must be long enough to reach from beam to beam, or you can't do the job once you are up there anyways. Is there a risk of falling? Yes, of course. But in all the years I worked in tobacco no one ever fell in one of our barns. Not a youngster or an adult. Additionally, the higher in the barn you were stationed, the LESS work you were doing. The man on the bottom tier handles every single stick getting hung in the barn. If you are on the top tier of a 4 tier barn, you only handle 1/4 of the sticks. The majority of your time is spent just standing on the beams waiting for the next stick to come up. So, there's plenty of time to think about NOT falling and making sure to move around so your legs don't cramp up. Not really any more dangerous than climbing a tree if you ask me.
"Exposure to dangerous chemicals" I think is also pretty overstated. There are pesticides sprayed on the fields early in the season when the plants are very young. This is done with a tractor sprayer and no one is really being "exposed" to this chemical to any extent. The only person in the field that day is the one driving the tractor. The plants aren't physically handled after this for a good long while either. The only job to do at this time is hoeing. By the time "suckering" comes around, the pesticides are pretty much gone from the surface of the plants.
The other dangerous chemical is used when the plants are "topped and oiled". The flowering part of the plant is cut off from the top, and a chemical is sprayed on the plant to control the "suckers". Some farmers spray the chemical with a tractor sprayer, others with handheld garden type sprayers similar to what you use to spray roundup on the weeds in your lawn. How dangerous are these chemicals? I don't know, I'm not a doctor. But I never got sick from them. Maleic hydrazide is the active ingredient in these sprays (source : http://www2.ca.uky.edu/agc/pubs/agr/agr154/agr154.htm )
"Two-thirds of the children interviewed reported vomiting, nausea, headaches, and dizziness while working on tobacco farms, all symptoms consistent with acute nicotine poisoning. "
These are also symptoms associated with being outdoors in the heat too much, drinking a cold soda too fast in the sun, not eating sufficiently when working outdoors on a hot day, and being a kid trying to get out of work on the family farm
. Maybe I'm a skeptic, but I seriously doubt that 2/3 of them really had nicotine poisoning.
One last thing and I'm gonna get off of the "child labor" stuff. In this area, the tobacco fields are one of the ONLY places that a young man or woman can make a little decent money during the summer. Like most of the country, child labor laws have made it to where a 12-15 year old can't really get a job in many places. Then at age 16 it's pretty much a minimum wage fast food job or nothing at all. So, a 14 year old with a little bit of gumption, who doesn't mind a hard day's work and wants to get a little money together (maybe for a car in a couple years) can always turn to a local tobacco farmer for work. Unfortunately the number of young people with that kind of gumption and the willingness to do the hard work is shrinking constantly (not to mention adults willing to do the work). This has forced most farmers to turn to immigrant laborers instead. Since the immigrant laborers are there every day, always willing to work, it's hard for many farmers to place for the few young locals who do want to work. When you have one group of people who you can't rely on to be there for the job, and another group you can rely on ... well guess who gets the job?
environmental impacts of farming
I'd say no more than any other cash crop, and less than many.
Children should not be doing labor that takes a man's brawn to do.
Agreed. I never once in all my years in the tobacco fields ever saw a child being asked to do a man's work. Young children are usually given jobs such as picking up loose leaves that have fallen, bringing cups of water to those who are in the fields, dropping sticks to be used by those who are spiking the plants (carrying tobacco sticks into the field and laying them on the ground in predetermined intervals), etc. I have very fond memories of "pegging" during setting season. I had a short wooden stake and a couple tobacco plants in my hands and would walk barefoot 20 feet behind the setter. Whenever someone missed a plant on the setter, I "pegged" a hole in the ground and inserted a plant, then mounded the dirt up around the base. I felt like a "real" farmer every one of those plants that I hand-set in the ground.
There's plenty of jobs to do on the tobacco farm that don't require a man's brawn. I could go on for days about the little odd jobs I did as a kid. All very fond memories indeed.
A tobacco farm instilled in me the work ethic and many of the values I carry today. I wouldn't dream of depriving any young man of those lessons. I didn't always like it back then, but wouldn't trade it for anything now.
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