Publications: Urbanization and Agriculture
Right-To-Farm: Typical Provisions
Alexandra Lizano, Research Fellow; National Agricultural Law Center
Rusty Rumley, Senior Staff Attorney; National Agricultural Law Center
All fifty states have enacted right-to-farm laws that seek to protect qualifying farmers and ranchers from nuisance lawsuits filed by individuals who move into a rural area where normal farming operations exist, and who later use nuisance actions to attempt to stop those ongoing operations. While the overall statutory schemes might be similar, each state has noticeably different content in the specific details of the laws. This publication provides a categorization of typical and reoccurring provisions within right to farm laws that have been passed in various states. The primary aim of this compilation is to provide the researcher with a way to recognize and distinguish specific provisions have been included in the statutory language among states. Access this compilation. Posted 1/31/19, updated 6/26/23.
Issue Brief: Smithfield Foods and Right to Farm in North Carolina
Rusty Rumley, Senior Staff Attorney; National Agricultural Law Center
This short informational piece provides essential background, current events, relevant legal issues, and additional resources regarding a recent series of North Carolina cases involving nuisance claims against swine farms. Specifically, it describes the cases in North Carolina and explains why the right to farm statute did not apply to those operations in this specific case. Download this article. Posted 10/10/18
Right-to-Farm Statutes and Corporate Farming Laws – PowerPoint Presentation
Rusty Rumley Staff Attorney National Agricultural Law Center
This is a presentation that was given to the annual conference of the American Agricultural Law Association on Sept 25, 2009. It discusses common themes in states’ right-to-farm statutes, including policy statements, definitions, limitations, prohibitions on local governmental action, and the awarding of attorney fees and costs; while providing a special emphasis on the statutes of Oklahoma and Arkansas. It further explains the corporate farming laws that are in effect in several states, and addresses the court challenges to those laws. Download this presentation. Posted: October 6, 2009
States’ Right-To-Farm Statutes
Elizabeth Springsteen Staff Attorney National Agricultural Law Center
All fifty states have enacted right-to-farm laws that seek to protect qualifying farmers and ranchers from nuisance lawsuits filed by individuals who move into a rural area where normal farming operations exist, and who later use nuisance actions to attempt to stop those ongoing operations. While the overall statutory schemes might be similar, each state has noticeably different content in the specific details of the laws. States’ Right-to-Farm Statutes provides the statutory text of each state’s laws, along with the date of its possible expiration. The primary aim of this compilation is to provide the researcher with easy and free access to a state’s statutory language by simply clicking on the state’s image in the map provided. Access to the state legislative site where the official language of the statute is maintained is also provided. Download this compilation. Posted: June 5, 2009
Governments and Unconstitutional Takings: When Do Right-To-Farm Laws Go Too Far?
Terence J. Centner Professor, College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences University of Georgia
State anti-nuisance laws, known as right-to-farm laws, burden neighboring property owners with nuisances. The purpose of the laws is to protect existing investments by offering an affirmative defense. Activities that are not a nuisance when commenced cannot become a nuisance due to changes in land uses by neighbors. While most state laws involve a lawful exercise of the state’s police powers, a right-to-farm law may set forth protection against nuisances that is so great that it operates to effect a regulatory taking. Judicial rulings that two Iowa right-to-farm laws went too far in reducing neighbors’ constitutionally protected rights augur an opportunity to rethink right-to-farm laws. Rather than relying upon a marketplace economy to protect businesses, a law based upon an economy of nature may be drafted to protect farmland and other natural resources. Download this article. Posted: May 23, 2007
Zoning Limitations and Opportunities for Farm Enterprise Diversification:Searching for New Meaning in Old Definitions
Robert Andrew Branan Executive Director North Carolina Farm Transition Network
Advocates of small farm viability are increasingly proposing market-driven state and local policy initiatives to counter the loss of farms at the urban edge due to rising land and input prices, falling commodity prices, and an overall deterioration of the rural infrastructure that has until recent decades supported the agricultural economy of rural communities. This is largely due to the low political priority in the agricultural sector of regulatory-based programs designed to stem farm loss. At the core of these initiatives is the provision of legal, financial, technical, and moral support and protection to direct farm marketing and other production diversification efforts such as direct niche marketing (e.g. organic produce or grass-fed beef), farmers’ markets, farm stands, and on-farm retail operations and recreational experiences. A common theme of these economic development efforts is the encouragement of local governments to exercise their zoning powers with increasing flexibility and restraint as they review a farm’s – and in aggregate a farm community’s – applications to diversify or otherwise change the nature of its traditional operation to take advantage of the economic opportunities offered by growing urban markets. In the quest for new avenues to farm profitability, however, the ends may not justify the means when facing local zoning authorities. Download this article. Posted: May 7, 2004
Nuisance Immunity Provided by Iowa’s Right-To-Farm Statute: A Taking Without Just Compensation?
Stephanie L. Dzur Attorney at Law
To preserve farmlands, agricultural protection laws, commonly known as right-to-farm, have been enacted in all fifty states. The right-to-farm laws seek to adjust legal rights between competing property interests by protecting agriculture from nuisance claims and isone way in which the important public policy of preserving land for agricultural uses is effectuated. As the United States Supreme Court has recently become more protective of private property rights, the Constitution has emerged as a new weapon to strike at right-to-farm laws. In Bormann v. Board of Supervisors, the Iowa Supreme Court held that an Iowa statute giving immunity from nuisance suits to farming activities in areas designated as agricultural areas violated the Takings Clause of the Iowa and United States Constitutions. This article examines how the Iowa court arrived at its determination. It will discuss how the property right subject to the takings analysis is defined and whether the Bormann court was correct in characterizing the nuisance immunity as a per se taking of property without just compensation. Download this article. Posted: Feb. 12, 2004