Imagine an industry with unregulated hours, uncontrolled clouds of dust and particulates, heavy machinery with no inspection requirements and people operating that machinery alone and far from assistance.

Sounds like something out of the 19th century, doesn’t it? The bad old days of the early Industrial Revolution?

Look out your car window as you drive through the Iowa countryside in October and you’ll see it in action.

Harvest season is under way across Iowa’s great farmlands, and every once in a while we should stop and consider what that experience is really like. Comfort and safety have increased inside those tractors and combines, but long workdays and stress keep climbing as farmers handle more and more acres in a limited span of time.

As for the part that’s most obvious from a distance — the dust — Sen. Charles Grassley is battling to exempt farmers from Environmental Protection Agency restrictions on the stuff. It’s unusual to take a stand against safety, but Grassley is right. Such rules would be meaningless and unenforceable — imagine thousands of inspectors chasing thousands of combines over millions of acres, and decide if we want to pay for that.

Clean air is always a good thing, but in this case, the dirty conditions are a price farmers pay for what’s left of their ever-dwindling independence.

When you count on a banker for an annual operating loan to stay in business, feed hogs as a contract employee of a large corporation and depend on federal crop support payments, you’ve reached a fairly flimsy definition of the word “independent.”

But our farmers cling to what’s left of the concept. They still make decisions every day about priorities, spending and methods, and find satisfaction in that.

In our heavily regulated workplaces off the farm, we barely notice nowadays how ridiculous some of the requirements are. But we assume that we’ll finish our shift in safety every day.

Out in the fields, spinning shafts, massive wheels and choking dust pose constant threats during the long days of autumn.

Out in the fields, government isn’t watching. And it really can’t.