Ten-year-old Jacob Mosbacher drives a tractor through a bean field on his grandparents' property near Fults, Ill. Agriculture organizations and federal lawmakers from farm states succeeded last spring in convincing the U.S. Labor Department to drop proposals limiting farm work by children such as Jacob, whose parents say such questions of safety involving youngsters should be left to parents.

FULTS, Ill. — As he watched his 10-year-old son ease a tractor across a soybean field, Dennis Mosbacher acknowledged the risks of farming.

But Mosbacher said the U.S. Labor Department was misguided in its attempts to protect children from farm accidents and he's relieved the agency dropped its plans this spring and has promised not to take up the matter again.

“You can't make a rule to stop every accident,” Mosbacher said after his son Jacob hopped off the 40-year-old, 60-horsepower tractor at their farm near the tiny southern Illinois town of Fults. “There's always a risk in life, no matter what you do.”

Labor Department officials don't deny that, but they note that children performing farm work are four times more likely to be killed than those employed in all other industries combined.

Under the Labor Department's failed proposal, paid farm workers would have to be 16 to use power equipment, such as tractors. They would have to be 18 to work at grain elevators, silos and feedlots. The rules would not have applied to children working at farms owned by their parents, but they would have limited the paid jobs youngsters could do on their neighbors' and relatives' farms.

John Myers, chief of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health Administration's surveillance and field investigations branch, said it's unfortunate the agency dropped its proposal in the face of opposition from agricultural groups. Agency officials have said they will not take up the matter again as long as Barack Obama is president.

The push for tougher restrictions came at a time when fewer children are being injured on farms.

For every 1,000 U.S. farms, agriculture-related injuries to workers younger than 20 dropped by nearly half from 2001 to 2009, from 13.5 injuries to 7.2 injuries, according U.S. government figures. Injuries were most common among children ages 10 to 15, but they also dropped by nearly half during that period.

Farming groups attribute such declines to farmers' and ranchers' greater awareness of risks, but they add that it's vital children begin farm work at an early age so safety requirements become engrained in them. Agriculture groups also note that rural children looking for summer jobs often have no option other than farm work and enhancing regulations could dampen youngsters' enthusiasm for farming.

“We're the first to recognize that farming can be dangerous, but broad, sweeping intervention is not the best way to go about addressing it,” said Kristi Boswell, the congressional relations chief for the American Farm Bureau Federation, which opposed the Labor Department's push.

Debbie Mosbacher said the proposal didn't reflect the reality on farms, where children grow up understanding the dangers and are eased into risky chores. She noted that for Jacob, that meant riding on the tractor in his father's lap when he was 4 and feeding livestock when the cattle still towered over him. Last year, he started driving the riding lawnmower.

When it comes to farm children pitching in, “a lot of times, yes, it's a necessity,” she said. “A 10-year-old may not be able to load a 70-pound bale. But everyone's got a job to do, and if you wait until they're 18 to teach them it won't be something that's instinctive in them.”