American agriculture runs partly on child labor, and this film investigates how that happens legally. Federal law carves out an exception for farm work that lets children as young as twelve, sometimes younger on family operations, put in long hours picking crops that end up in supermarkets and fast-food supply chains. Cameras follow young workers in the fields, hoeing and harvesting under a hot sun, while parents and advocates describe the wages, the missed school days, and the pesticide exposure that come with the work. Growers and industry representatives explain why they rely on this labor pool and defend the carve-out as necessary and traditional. Labor organizers and researchers lay out the history of how farmwork got excluded from the child labor protections that cover nearly every other industry, and what efforts to close that gap have run into in Congress. The film keeps its focus on the children themselves, asking what it costs a kid to spend a childhood in someone else's harvest.