![Rehoboth a right to farm community](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Rehoboth_a_right_to_farm_community.jpg)
Right to farm laws in the United States deny
nuisance
Nuisance (from archaic ''nocence'', through Fr. ''noisance'', ''nuisance'', from Lat. ''nocere'', "to hurt") is a common law tort. It means that which causes offence, annoyance, trouble or injury. A nuisance can be either public (also "common") ...
lawsuit
-
A lawsuit is a proceeding by a party or parties against another in the civil court of law. The archaic term "suit in law" is found in only a small number of laws still in effect today. The term "lawsuit" is used in reference to a civil actio ...
s against
farmer
A farmer is a person engaged in agriculture, raising living organisms for food or raw materials. The term usually applies to people who do some combination of raising field crops, orchards, vineyards, poultry, or other livestock. A farmer mig ...
s who use accepted and standard farming practices and have been in prior operation even if these practices harm or bother adjacent property owners or the general public. Agricultural nuisances may include noise, odors, visual clutter and dangerous structures. All 50 states have some form of Right to Farm law.
Many of these laws were passed after 1980 because of the reduction of available
farmland
Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...
, adversity from private and public nuisance actions, which hinder the prospect of farming. The laws are aimed to minimize the threat to normal farming practices from nuisance litigation and prohibitive state and local government regulation. In contrast to typical farmland preservation policies, which aim to preserve farmland itself, Right to Farm laws attempt to preserve the agricultural practices and enhance farm viability.
Local laws represent support for farming practices by a community and are often so more refined and clearer than state laws; they typically define the extent of protection farmers actually receive from nuisance suits and inappropriate regulation.
Protection for farmers
![Rochester is a Right to farm community](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Rochester_is_a_Right_to_farm_community.jpg)
Right to farm laws vary across the nation. They are intended to bolster the legitimacy of agricultural concerns, defend farmers rights without undue outside interference, and minimize or resolve public and private
land use
Land use involves the management and modification of natural environment or wilderness into built environment such as settlements and semi-natural habitats such as arable fields, pastures, and managed woods. Land use by humans has a long h ...
conflicts. In a broader sense the notion originally referred to relief from all kinds of undue interference, usually involving legal interpretations focused on nuisance issues such as noise, odors,
environmental
A biophysical environment is a biotic and abiotic surrounding of an organism or population, and consequently includes the factors that have an influence in their survival, development, and evolution. A biophysical environment can vary in scale f ...
, visual, farm technology, etc. This is partly because it is a modification of the common law doctrine of nuisance.
Common law nuisances are seen as private or public nuisances. A public nuisance impairs the health, safety, morals, and comfort of the general community without necessarily harming particular property rights in any kind way. A private nuisance unreasonably interferes with the use and enjoyment of another's land.
For a nuisance that the law will provide a remedy, there must he a substantial and unreasonable interference with the property interest being asserted. The interference can be negligent or intentional. For instance in the duties of farm operations, an action constituting a nuisance will be deemed intentional even if it is unintended if it is an easily likely consequence of the farmer's otherwise protected farming activities. The drifting of sprayed farm pesticides onto a neighbor's land is considered an intentional nuisance even though this particular result is unintended.
Right-to-farm policies vary at different policy levels, resulting in inconsistent interpretations regarding what constitutes an 'agrarian district' or 'proper' agrarian practice. Government officials may intervene and enact such laws for resource preservation or municipal management purposes, but states and their respective localities are usually left to their own devices. In New York, the NYSDAM (New York State Department of Agriculture & Markets) evaluates nuisance lawsuits on a case-by-case basis. As per §308 of New York's Right-To-Farm Statute, farm owners and operators are protected from private nuisance suits "provided such agricultural practice constitutes a sound agricultural practice pursuant to an opinion issued upon request by the commissioner". Further, New York's policy does not protect against damages for personal injury or wrongful death claims, nor does it apply to public nuisances. Note that this policy definition may influence stakeholders to obtain farmland in states where their interests are protected by that state's respective right-to-farm law.
History
The laws were developed in the 1970s as a response to
suburb
A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...
an encroachment on
agricultural land
Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other organism, forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous ...
. The concern was that as farmland was converted to suburban developments, the new residents would bring lawsuits against the pre-existing farms complaining about agricultural noise, dust, and other nuisances.
The legal costs to defend themselves would tend to push farmers out of business, and the trend toward
urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation) refers to the population shift from rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. It is predominantly t ...
would accelerate. The laws were created as a way to protect small farmers from these lawsuits and thereby preserve the open space that made the communities attractive in the first place.
passed the first right to farm law in 1979.
In 1979,
Pilesgrove Township, New Jersey
Pilesgrove Township is a township in Salem County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 4,183, an increase of 167 (+4.2%) from the 2010 census count of 4,016, which in turn reflect ...
enacted the state's first right-to-farm
ordinance
Ordinance may refer to:
Law
* Ordinance (Belgium), a law adopted by the Brussels Parliament or the Common Community Commission
* Ordinance (India), a temporary law promulgated by the President of India on recommendation of the Union Cabinet
* ...
, protecting farming as a "natural right hereby ordained to exist as a permitted use everywhere in the Township of Pilesgrove."
By 2015, every state has a similar law, but the details can vary.
Debate
The utilization of right to farm policies for corporate agriculture can be considered a '
wicked problem
In planning and policy, a wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It refers to an idea or problem that cannot be fix ...
'. These problems are shaped by "dynamic social and political factors as well as biophysical complexities", and an array of local, state, and government stakeholders.
These diverse actors result in a high degree of variability in terms of defining what is protected under respective right to farm laws. Thus, the initial intention of such policies was to preserve the nation's agrarian roots and support the small-scale farmer, potential for misappropriation exists. In 2014, the
American Legislative Exchange Council
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives who draft and share model legislation for distribution among state governments in the United State ...
financially backed Missouri's Right-to-Farm amendment (Amendment 1), fueling further controversy that Right-to-Farm laws are being enacted to assist corporate agriculture, not small family-owned farms and the traditional farming practices used by small farm owners.
In November 2016, Oklahoma voters defeated a Right-to-Farm bill (State Question 777) which garnered just 39.7 percent of the vote.
State Question 777 was heavily backed by the Oklahoma Farm Bureau and by voters in the Oklahoma panhandle where the giant multinational agribusiness Seaboard Corporation has a pork production plant.
See also
*
Agricultural zoning Agricultural zoning is a land management tool that refers to local zoning designations made by local jurisdictions that are intended to protect farmland and farming activities from incompatible land uses. Agricultural zoning can specify many facto ...
*
NIMBY
NIMBY (or nimby), an acronym for the phrase "not in my back yard", is a characterization of opposition by residents to proposed developments in their local area, as well as support for strict land use regulations. It carries the connotation that ...
References
*
{{commonscat, Right to farm laws
Further reading
Property Observercovers th
External links
States’ Right-To-Farm Statutes- National Agricultural Law Center
Agricultural law
Agriculture in the United States
Food sovereignty
State law in the United States
Urban planning in the United States
Zoning in the United States
United States state environmental legislation