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Right to Farm

Posted by Rick Harris on

One of the reasons we are so committed to remaining rural in our practice is that we are a proud Right to Farm Community. Most of our staff were born and bred here or in a nearby community and went to law school specifically to be of continued service to our town.

Many of us come from farm families, benefit greatly from the land, and work hard to give back. Farming is a one of the most noble and yet underappreciated occupations in this nation. We are so blessed to live on such a fruitful land and we must honor it while reaping benefits from it. That notion should be the mentality of Americana – so we don’t understand or pay much mind to the larger-scale goings-ons in the nation.

Right to farm laws protect farmers for being the kind of nuisance inherent to farming: producing unsavory odors, not being visually beautiful, making lots of noise, and relying on dangerous structures and machinery. The laws were put into place during white flight and suburb-building to protect farmers against encroachment. The concern being that with the suburbs come new citizens from the city who may want the benefits of living outside of the city without any of the discomforts of being part of a farm-based community.

While people wanted to have it both ways – the safety of a rural area with the comfort of an urban area – and this meant that long-held farming traditions were being suddenly seen as an inconvenience to new citizens.