29 CFR § 780.138 - Application of the general principles.

Some examples will serve to illustrate the above principles. Employees of a fruit grower who dry or pack fruit not grown by their employer are not within section (f). This is also true of storage operations conducted by a farmer in connection with products grown by someone other than the farmer. Employees of a grower-operator of a sugarcane mill who transport cane from fields to the mill are not within section 3(f), where such cane is grown by independent farmers on their land as well as by the mill operator (Bowie v. Gonzalez, 117 F. 2d 11). Employees of a tobacco grower who strip tobacco (i.e., remove the leaves from the stalk) are not agricultural employees when performing this operation on tobacco not grown by their employer. On the other hand, where a farmer rents some space in a warehouse or packinghouse located off the farm and the farmer's own employees there engage in handling or packing only his own products for market, such operations by the farmers are within section 3(f) if performed as an incident to or in conjunction with his farming operations. Such arrangements are distinguished from those where the employees are not actually employed by the farmer. The fact that a packing shed is conducted by a family partnership, packing products exclusively grown on lands owned and operated by individuals constituting the partnership, does not alter the status of the packing activity. Thus, if in a particular case an individual farmer is engaged in agriculture, a family partnership which performs the same operations would also be engaged in agriculture. (Dofflemeyer v. NLRB, 206 F. 2d 813.) However, an incorporated association of farmers that does not itself engage in farming operations is not engaged in agriculture though it processes at its packing shed produce grown exclusively by the farmer members of the association. (Goldberg v. Crowley Ridge and Fruit Growers Association, 295 F. 2d 7 (C.A. 8).)