Opinion ID: 656580
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Development of the Agricultural Exemption

Text: 21 The sponsor of the bill that was ultimately enacted as the FLSA, Senator Black of Alabama, clearly and unambiguously described the broad reach intended by the FLSA's agricultural exemption. 22 The bill specifically and unequivocally excludes certain industries and certain types of business from its scope and effect. It specifically excludes workers in agriculture of all kinds and of all types. There is contained in the measure, perhaps, the most comprehensive definition of agriculture which has been included in any one legislative proposal. 23 We have placed together in the bill definitions of agricultural work which have been fixed from time to time in other legislative enactments, and in addition to that we have drawn liberally from Mr. Webster's definition of agriculture. 24 81 Cong.Rec. 7648 (1937). As originally introduced the FLSA defined agriculture as ... any practices ordinarily performed by a farmer as an incident to such farming operations. 81 Cong.Rec. 7653 (1937). During the ensuing Congressional debates some senators became concerned that this language was not broad enough to exempt independent contractors hired by farmers to perform agricultural services such as wheat threshing. 3 In order to insure that independent contractors who performed agricultural tasks on farms, but who were not technically farmers, were covered by the exemption, Congress adopted an amended definition of agriculture that has remained unchanged since the FLSA was enacted. 4 25 'Agriculture' includes farming in all its branches and among other things includes the cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, the production, cultivation, growing, and harvesting of any agricultural or horticultural commodities ..., the raising of livestock ... and any practices ... performed by a farmer or on a farm as an incident to or in conjunction with such farming operations, including preparation for market, delivery to storage or to market, or to carriers for transportation to market. 29 U.S.C. § 203(f). (emphasis added) 26 The Supreme Court first addressed the scope of the agricultural exemption in Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb, 337 U.S. 755, 760-763, 69 S.Ct. 1274, 1277-1278, 93 L.Ed. 1672 (1949). The Court stated that the determinative issue in analyzing the scope of the exemption was not whether the work is necessary to agricultural production ... [but whether it] can itself be termed agriculture. Id. at 759-760, 69 S.Ct. at 1277. The Court concluded that the exemption recognized two types of agricultural activity: primary and secondary. 27 Whether a particular type of activity is agricultural depends, in large measure, upon the way in which that activity is organized in a particular society ... The question is whether the activity in the particular case is carried on as part of the agricultural function or is separately organized as an independent productive activity ... As can be readily seen, this definition [of agriculture] has two distinct branches. First, there is the primary meaning. Agriculture includes farming in all its branches. Certain specific practices such as cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, etc., are listed as being included in this primary meaning. Second, there is the broader meaning. Agriculture is defined to include things other than farming ... whether or not themselves farming practices, which are performed either by a farmer or on a farm, incidently to or in conjunction with such farming operations. 28 337 U.S. at 760-763, 69 S.Ct. at 1277-1278. For the broader, secondary agricultural activity to fall within the scope of the exemption, the Court stated that the activity had to meet two criteria: (1) it had to be performed either by a farmer or on a farm and (2) it had to be incidental to or in conjunction with farming operations. Id. at 766 and n. 15, 69 S.Ct. at 1280 and n. 15. 29 In Farmers Reservoir the Court held that work of employees of a water supply company cooperatively owned by a group of farmers was not exempt as secondary agricultural work even though the work was incidental to agriculture because it was not performed either by farmers or on a farm. 337 U.S. at 767, 69 S.Ct. at 1281. The Court reasoned that the employees' work was not performed by farmers, although the company that employed them was wholly owned by farmers, because the company had been established as an independent entity to supply water to farmers--an activity that the court characterized as self-contained and separated from the farmers' farming activities. The Court also reasoned that the employees' work was not exempt as work performed on a farm because the employees worked only on waterways owned by the company and never worked on the farms to which the company supplied water. 5 337 U.S. at 767-768, 69 S.Ct. at 1281. 30 Six years later in Maneja v. Waialua Agricultural Co., 349 U.S. 254, 75 S.Ct. 719, 99 L.Ed. 1040 (1955), the Court again addressed the scope of the agricultural exemption. The Court held that certain employees of a corporate sugar plantation were exempt from the FLSA's wage and hour provisions while others were not exempt even though, unlike the Farmers Reservoir employees, all of the Waialua employees worked both for a farmer and on a farm. The Court held that employees who operated the farm's railroad to transport work crews, equipment, and supplies to and from the fields and sugar cane to the processing plant and those who repaired the mechanical implements used in farming were exempt because their tasks were incidental to the farm's primary agricultural activities. Employees who worked in the corporation's sugar processing plant and who maintained the worker's village were not exempt because their jobs were not incidental to the farm's primary agricultural activities. 349 U.S. at 262-263, 75 S.Ct. at 724-725. The effect of Waialua was to narrow the second prong of the test for secondary agricultural activity. For secondary agricultural activity to be exempt it had to be performed by a farmer or on a farm and it had to be incidental to the farming operations performed either by the farmer for whom it was done or on the farm where it was done. 6 31 While Farmers Reservoir and Waialua established that the agricultural exemption is not available to nonfarmers performing secondary agricultural tasks off the farm, or to farm employees performing secondary agricultural tasks on a farm that are not incidental to the farm's own farming operations, neither case addressed the applicability of the exemption to independent contractors who perform primary agricultural tasks on the farms of client farmers and secondary agricultural tasks incidental to their clients' farming operations off their clients' farms. Those issues were addressed by this court in Wirtz v. Osceola Farms Co., 372 F.2d 584 (5th Cir.1967). In Osceola Farms we found that the principles established in Farmers Reservoir and Waialua did not preclude us from recognizing the need for independent contractors to perform secondary agricultural tasks off the farms of their client farmers without losing their right to the agricultural exemption. Osceola Farms was an independent contractor that provided farm laborers to harvest sugar cane from the fields of client farmers. We held that Osceola Farms drivers who transported the farm laborers to and from client's farms and who transported meals from off-farm locations to the laborers to eat in the fields were exempt because their work was incidental to the primary agricultural task of harvesting performed by the Osceola Farms laborers. Id. at 589. 32