Cite as: 517 U. S. 392 (1996)
Opinion of the Court
See Imco Poultry, 202 N. L. R. B., at 261 (Because chicken catching crews "have no business relationship with the independent farmers, we conclude that the employees' activities were not incidental to the independent farmers' poultry raising operations.").
We find the Board's answer reasonable. Once the broilers have grown on the farm for seven weeks, the growers' contractual obligation to raise the birds ends, and the work of the live-haul crew begins. The record reflects minimal overlap between the work of the live-haul crew and the independent growers' raising activities. The growers do not assist the live-haul crews in catching or loading the chickens; their only responsibilities are to move certain equipment from the chicken coops prior to the crews' arrival, and to be present when the crews are on the farms. App. to Brief for Federal Respondent 3a. Nor do the live-haul employees play any role in the growers' performance of their contractual undertakings.
The record, furthermore, supports the Board's conclusion that the live-haul crews' activities were conjoined with Holly Farms' processing operations, rather than with farming.10
inescapably satisfy the statute. Post, at 414-415. FLSA § 3(f), all agree, does not apply absent a connection between the activity in question and the primary farming operations conducted "on a farm." But the statutory language—"incident to or in conjunction with"—does not place beyond rational debate the nature or extent of the required connection. See 29 CFR § 780.144 (1995) (recognition by the Secretary of Labor that the "line between practices that are and those that are not performed 'as an incident to or in conjunction with' such farming operations is not susceptible of precise definition").
10 Holly Farms argues, and the dissent agrees, post, at 414, that the Board's conclusion rests on the assumption that a given activity can be incidental to one thing only—in this case, either processing or farming, but not both. At oral argument, counsel for the Board stated that Holly Farms had not accurately conveyed the Board's position. Tr. of Oral Arg. 33, 38. The Board apparently recognizes, as do we, that an activity can be incidental to more than one thing. To gain the agricultural exemption, however, farming must be an enterprise to which the activity at issue is incidental. The relevant question under the statute, therefore,
403
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