I grew up deeply involved in 4-H, and this piece reflects my personal experiences and observations from that time. While I am no longer affiliated with the organization as an adult, I write with respect for its role in many rural communities and with an honest eye toward the complexities it embodies. This is neither a promotional nor critical piece, but an exploration grounded in my own story and the broader social and ethical dimensions of rural youth labor.
Every year for the last few, I spend an evening at the nearby county 4-H fair in the rural lower Midwest. The fair is a tradition, and so is my annual funnel cake. It’s also probably one of the most important communal events of the year. Children show off the projects they’ve worked on for months, and folks hoot and holler over the roar of demolition derby carnage. It’s a careful balance between creation and destruction.
It seems like everyone attends: friends, neighbors, distant kin from down yonder who you haven’t seen since last fair, and if you’re particularly unlucky, your ex you’d rather not see at all. I grew up a 4-H kid and a fair kid, and this year felt much the same as always. The fair is a liminal place where time seemingly stands still. I think everyone was wearing the same clothing styles from 25+ years ago, and honestly, that makes sense. There’s a practicality to rural Midwest life. Boot cut jeans are sensible when you often wear boots, and plaid or gingham shirts hide dirt well. The rest? Mostly the same: food, vendors, rides, games, exhibit halls, and the familiar aroma of barnyard and deep-fried-who-knows-what.
The evening was particularly hot and humid. The kind that either punishes or graces, depending on your sensibilities, the lower Midwest. The kind where you’re not sure whether you’ve been displaced to the Deep South or descended into hell. I’m not sure I have a memory of a stickier evening. The air clung to me, as did the dust, straw bits, and biting bugs that likely perished in my sweat.
I arrived after the livestock shows had ended and the exhibit hall had closed, so I went to the goat and sheep barn to have a look and pet a few animals. These were my livestock. I had bought, raised, and sold both, and I spent every fair in the goat and sheep barn. Entering brought a sense of coming home and nostalgia. I wasn’t intending to reflect, but I suppose that’s what happens when you return to something you knew well in your younger years.
There’s a lot of complexity to raising animals for meat, at least there was for me. It’s how to care for them, how to build trust and relationships with them, and ultimately how to let go. And that’s probably the most poetic and pretty way to say, “send to slaughter”. That’s the uncomfortable truth.
The first goat I raised and sold was a little saanen named Norm, or maybe Knorm or Gnorm, because I was a creative 10-year-old who liked silent letters. And by little, I mean Norm was tiny. He only weighed about 16 pounds and could slip through the bars of the fence. He was sick as a newborn kid and just never grew, but I loved that little goat fiercely and fully, as I did all my animals.
When it came time to say goodbye, I vividly remember leaving the fair for the last time feeling like I had betrayed a friend. It was a big feeling for a big hearted 10-year-old whose mission in life was to save all the animals in the Amazon Rainforest. But that’s what I signed up for and committed to. It didn’t make me feel much better then, and it still doesn’t. It was my early start to thinking about ethics, responsibility, and the complicated promises involved in raising animals.
What a lot of people don’t know is that 4-H livestock sales are a viable option for youth in rural America to earn money where jobs are limited, family incomes are low, space is plentiful, and starting life or pursuing trade school or college seems to require riches. Community college may not even be a reasonable option because of geographic isolation, although that’s changing with online education. I didn’t have a college fund. My college savings started and grew from livestock sales I made myself, as did other children and teens I knew in my rural Millennial generation. It wasn’t enough to pay fully for college, but it was enough to contribute in a meaningful way. I recognize that my education was partially and directly funded by the lives of animals.
There’s a lot of pride and care in the barn. There’s names of 4-H members and their animals on white paper signs, bigger wooden signs etched with club names, ribbons flutter in the breeze, photos capture memories. You can leave the barn knowing an animal’s favorite food and its birthday, but not the handler’s.
Around then, I was shooed from the barn, because people were working to increase air flow and cool the animals. Meanwhile, I was taking up space and creating more heat. So, I skedaddled to get a bite to eat at the 4-H booth in support of the organization that molded my childhood.
Like many 4-H food booths, it was almost entirely worked by teen girls and 4-H moms. I wondered where the teen boys and 4-H dads were. Maybe they had served their time earlier in the day. Still, the scene felt very much like traditional gendered kitchen work, with girls and women preparing and serving food. As I ate my burger with iced lemonade, my thoughts wandered to the rural teen labor economy.
I have friends who grew up in the suburbs or urban areas who had first jobs in museums, hospitals, even in law offices. They weren’t prestigious, but they’re the kinds of jobs rural youth often lack the spatial proximity or social network to access or expand from. The rural teen labor market is limited. There’s agricultural work like baling hay and detasseling corn, babysitting, automotive work, or fast food. These roles tend to be gendered. Teen boys bale hay and detassel, maybe work in auto shops, or in fast food kitchens. Teen girls babysit and work as cashiers. If the area has box stores, the pattern continues with girls cashiering and boys lifting and stocking. Of course, this is a general observation and not a rule for every individual. Still, these divisions limit early self-discovery and control over one’s labor.
In contrast, 4-H livestock sales deviate. They are gender neutral. If a boy can lead a steer, then so can a girl. If a girl can nurture a chicken, so can a boy. In a largely Christian rural culture, this balance offers a meaningful example of what it means to have dominion over animal life, not through cruelty or dominance but through responsibility and care. And these youth are doing it so well.
Historically, livestock labor was gendered. Men typically handled large animals while women handled small livestock, except in dairy. Industrialization introduced machinery that sometimes blurred these lines. 4-H livestock programs allow for more gender flexibility and can offer a quiet space for youth who may not fit traditional local gender expectations. But here I speak in generalities also, because practicality tends to rule. When work needs to be done, it does not matter who does it, as long as it gets done.
I know someone is thinking “What about the animal’s life?” And that is a great question of which there isn’t a tidy answer satisfying to all. My objective isn’t to give a definitive answer about any of this.
People’s relationships with animals and food are complex, cultural, and shaped by economic reality. Despite increasing discussion about sustainability and plant-based alternatives, most people are unlikely to stop eating meat anytime soon. So, when we think about rural teen labor in the food system, let’s look at two likely and available options: fast food and a program like 4-H livestock.
Fast food labor is built on industrial agriculture and corporatism. It positions young people at the bottom of the hierarchy and far removed from the sources of food they serve. Their labor supports a supply chain that they have little control over and connection to. In contrast, 4-H offers a radically different experience rooted in care, responsibility, and personal investment. Youth are directly involved in the raising, handling, and eventual selling of the animals. Subsequently, they develop a tangible understanding of the food system and their role in it.
In 4-H, the relationship between person and animal is central. It is built on routines of feeding, grooming, training, cleaning stalls and coops, and trimming hooves. It requires months of consistent daily effort and attention. Members are not anonymous laborers. They are known by their animals, their clubs, and their communities. They learn financial management and entrepreneurship, not by clocking in and out or counting bills from a cash register, but by managing projects with real stakes and real consequences. Profit isn’t earned by meeting sales quotas or upselling an extra-large drink. It’s earned through the demonstration of knowledge, care, and stewardship. And it’s learning to say goodbye.
In my experience, 4-H livestock raising, purchasing, processing, and consumption are overwhelmingly local. The buyer might be a local bank or seed store. The animal is processed in the same local area, and the meat goes into local freezers of teachers, business owners, or church potluck organizers. The food supply chain stays tied to the local area.
So, returning to the question, what animals have the better life? Which path causes less harm?
In industrial agriculture, animals are often raised in crowded, confined conditions with minimal human interaction beyond what’s needed for efficiency. Their lives are governed by speed, scale, and cost-cutting for the benefit of corporate profit. In contrast, animals raised through 4-H programs typically live in cleaner environments, receive hands-on care, have space to pasture and graze, and are handled with a level of attention and dignity not afforded in mass systems. They are seen, touched, and known, and not just weighed and counted.
Of course, the end is the same. However, the experience and quality of life along the way differ significantly
So then, what is also better for youth development? What is better for local environment? What is more sustainable for the health and well-being of rural communities?.
The truth is these options aren’t either/or in the rural youth labor economy. Life isn’t that simple despite what bumper stickers on pickup trucks might suggest. For many rural teens, it can be and is likely to be both. And they shouldn’t be chastised either way. These are young people with incredibly limited opportunities, sometimes growing up in dying communities, and are learning different kinds of hard lessons. Despite that, they are trying to pave their path forward, and for that they should be commended.
I think of Norm from time to time. He was small, but he had a big impact on my life. He was my first goat, the first time I had to choose a farewell and live up to that responsibility, and my first encounter with the ethical complexity of rural life. Raising livestock wasn’t just agricultural work. It was an influential education in care and consequence. If I had the financial means, I’d probably buy all sorts of 4-H goats to keep at my own goat rescue.
For rural youth, programs like 4-H are where the emotional, economic, and ethical dimensions of labor meet. These programs offer opportunities for self-determination within a cultural and economic framework that is often limiting and resistant to change, and they serve as introductions to autonomy and decision making rooted in close relationships with land, animals, and community.
Norm is far more than a childhood memory. He marked the beginning of deeper understanding, one that continues to inform how I think about food systems, animal life, and the rural practices that shape local economies and moral frameworks. These aren’t abstract concepts in rural America. They are lived realities negotiated through muddy boots, shoveling shit, and hard goodbyes.