Code of Federal Regulations Title 29. Labor § 29.780.605 Employment in agriculture

One requirement for exemption is that the employee be employed in “agriculture.” “Agriculture,” as used in the Act, is defined in section 3(f) as follows:

(f) “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 (including commodities defined as agricultural commodities in section 15(g) of the Agricultural Marketing Act, as amended), the raising of livestock, bees, fur-bearing animals, or poultry, and any practices (including any forestry or lumbering operations) 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.

An employee meets the tests of being employed in agriculture when he either engages in any one or more of the branches of farming listed in the first part of the above definition or performs, as an employee of a farmer or on a farm, practices incident to such farming operations as mentioned in the second part of the definition (Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb, 337 U.S. 755). The exemption applies to “any employee” of a farmer whose employment meets the tests for exemption. Accordingly, any employee of the farmer who is employed in “agriculture,” including laborers, clerical, maintenance, and custodial employees, harvesters, dairy workers, and others may qualify for the exemption under section 13(b)(13) if the other conditions of the exemption are met.