Right to Farm--eating emotion

Increasingly, city-dwellers seeking view lots or large acreage have been fleeing the metropolitan areas to build larger and even luxurious homes in rural America, often opposite agricultural operations. Once they'd invested in constructing homes and settled into their new digs, they were awakened to the realities of country living, including the sights, smells and sounds of working farms... and they didn't like it. The offshoot was a plethora of nuisance suits that shut down family businesses to create a "more pleasant" neighborhood for the metro ex-pats. As a result, all states of the union subsequently adopted laws to protect farms and ranches from encroaching exurbanites--the urban refugees relocating in the hinterlands. What this exodus of city folk setting up housekeeping in the boondocks created was a land war between food producers and food consumers. New arrivals wanted to enjoy the beauty of the country without interference from farm or ranch operations whose presence preceded their arrival. Shortsightedness accompanied the transplant boom by restricting local farmers from, well, farming. The result of the pressures brought about closure and relocation of crops and livestock, costing families their livelihoods and legacies as well as increasing the cost of food. In the end, a few exurbanites got their dream homes but they paid for it in a higher cost of living by closing farms or chasing them down the road.

In a stab at saving agriculture from the exurbanite invasion, right to farm legislation passed to halt the nuisance lawsuits but they didn't go far enough. On the ballot in some nine states this election cycle are measures to extend the right to farm acts already on the books. As urban-centered environmentalists and animal rights organizations have interfered with regular farm practices over the years, attempting to impose their opinions of animal husbandry and crop management on practical operations, more farms and ranches have suffered bankruptcy and closure. Increased regulations from state and federal agencies (EPA, AQMD, WQMD, USDA and subsidiaries, etc.) have hamstrung the family, and corporate, farms and ranches, creating a need to rein in the agencies and constrain interfering advocacy groups. Oklahomans' "Right to Farm" measure SQ777 would amend their constitution with this: "To protect agriculture as a vital sector of Oklahoma's economy, which provides food, energy, health benefits, and security and is the foundation and stabilizing force of Oklahoma's economy, the right so citizens and lawful residents of Oklahoma to engage in farming and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed in this state. The Legislature shall pass no law which abridges the right of citizens and lawful residents of Oklahoma to employ agricultural technology and livestock production and ranching practices without a compelling state interest. Nothing in this section shall be construed to modify any provision of common law or statutes relating to trespass, eminent domain, dominance of mineral interests, easements, rights of way or any other property rights. Nothing in this section shall be construed to modify or affect any statute or ordinance enacted by the Legislature or any political subdivision prior to December 31, 2014."

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Strange arguments have cropped up in opposition to these measures. One argument relates to the fact that three states' bills are similarly worded and, according to opponents, qualifies as evidence that the measures are being sponsored by corporate agribusiness. Animal rights groups promoting protection of feral hogs oppose the Oklahoma measure as allowing landowners the right to dispatch the problematic species that incur grave damage to their crops and holdings. Mounting evidence of governmental interference with the natural business of farming and ranching around the country is rife in the media, and the courtrooms. Examples such as these--EPA fining a rancher $16 Million for building a stock pond, which penalty was finally reversed in court; Fish and Wildlife scheduling release of predatory wolves into the Heber-Overgaard ranch region of Arizona; and, in supposed violation of the Clean Water Act, a farmer being charged with illegally plowing his own fields, no less. In Oregon, a non-native wolf species (Canadian Gray) has been unnaturally relocated in the eastern region of the state. Since 1999, the still protected marauders have been ravaging cattle, sheep, horses and even working dogs, costing ranchers into the millions of dollars worth of livestock. The decimation of current and future generations of breeding stock runs up the cost of beef, which PETA and other special interest groups hail as victory. It looks like Oregon and Arizona could use the kind of expansion on the right to farm acts that Oklahoma, Missouri and Nebraska are voting on this year. Clawing to defeat the measures are a coalition of out-of-state environmental organizations like the Humane Society and Sierra Club bent on forcing uneducated, impractical and unworkable stock and land management methods on experienced ranchers and farmers. In effect, this is already what government bureaucracies have been increasingly implementing for years and doing a fantastic job of making farming so inefficient that it becomes unsustainable or impossible. The expansion of federal land management by government usurping millions of acres in the form of national monuments has also diminished the availability of arable land. Environmentalists' desired result is coming to fruition--the destruction of food production to the point that food is no longer affordable. Perhaps this is their answer to Scrooge's observation about how to lessen the "surplus population"...Make sustenance so expensive they die of starvation.