Code of Federal Regulations Title 29. Labor § 29.780.202 Subordination to farming operations is necessary for exemption

While section 3(f) speaks of practices performed “in conjunction with” as well as “incident to” farming operations, it would be an unreasonable construction of the Act to hold that all practices were to be regarded as agricultural if the person performing the practice did any farming, no matter how little, or resorted to tilling a small acreage for the purpose of qualifying for exemption (Ridgeway v. Warren, 60 F. Supp. 363 (M.D. Tenn.);  in re Combs, 5 WH Cases 595, 10 Labor Cases 62,802 (M.D. Ga.)). To illustrate, where an employer owns several thousand acres of timberland on which he carries on lumbering operations and cultivates about 100 acres of farm land which are contiguous to such timberland, he would not be engaged in agriculture so far as his forestry or lumbering operations are concerned. In such case, the forestry or lumbering operations would clearly not be subordinate to the farming operations but rather the principal or a separate business of the “farmer.”