Is there a right to farm?
Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 6 months ago to Legislation
So Missouri is Amending their Constitution to include the following: “That agriculture, which provides food, energy, health benefits, and security is the foundation and stabilizing force of Missouri’s economy. To protect this vital sector of Missouri’s economy, the right of farmers and ranchers to engage in farming and ranching practices shall be forever guaranteed in this state, subject to duly authorized powers, if any, conferred by article VI of the Constitution of Missouri.”
So what happens to natural and individual rights not added to constitutions?
So what happens to natural and individual rights not added to constitutions?
If you choose to buy a place, then you buy it for what it IS, not some place where you can become a neighborhood organizer and change the world to your little fantasy you had when you moved from your former urban hell... but keep the urban hell rules because it's "more civilized" than the peasants that have lived there for decades...
I have always thought it superfluous to re-state right rather than enforce a more general right, but it appears that re-documentation in explicit detail is what actually 'works' in the real world. I believe that one of the triggers for this amendment was that organic farmers felt threatened by conventional farmers using GMO crops to reduce pesticide and fertilizer use and improve profits. The organic farmers were suing the traditional farmers because bees could transfer some of the GMO crops genes to their own anti-GMO farms.
If what it takes for us to have our rights is for us to reiterate them in boring detail, I am for it.
Jan
I think it's assumed (by the writers of those constitutions) that those rights are covered by the US Declaration of Independence where it says that we all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The right to farm and ranch is something specific to Missouri'ans (at least whoever is proposing this amendment thinks so), and isn't covered by any other "rights" that we all have.
Maybe in today's political climate, we should think about formally listing out our "natural and individual" rights.
And what are those duly authorized powers? What's that all about?
I happen to live in a farming community and it often occurs to me that encroaching development and continuous harassment by the EPA is going to curtail our food supply.
Since we are the highest on the food chain and since farming is production in order to predate, the thought of returning to the primitive of being a hunter/gatherer doesn't particularly appeal to me.
Perhaps a bit of logic and reasoning would have made this more clear.
"subject to duly authorized powers, if any, conferred by article VI of the Constitution of Missouri.”
More gutless blather. No one has the fortitude to take any sort of stand, but instead have their "legal loophole escape clause" in case it costs them either kickback or votes...
For example, Idaho's bill says that once a piece of land is used for agriculture, people can't complain about any further agricultural uses it has. So a 40-acre plot with a one-acre cornfield in the middle becomes a 40-acre hog farm or chicken processing plant, and neighbors have no ability to protest it, which affects their personal property rights and makes it difficult for them to use and sell their land in the future.
If you don't like living in the country, stay in the suburbs. Don't move to our neck of the woods, then force us to change our lives to fit the fantasy "country life" your Real Estate Salesperson sold you or you read about in some Martha Stewart magazine...
Hell, we moved TO the country to get away from phony people like that, not buy into their Suburban Fantasy. We farm. We hunt. We cut wood. We use WOOD to heat our homes in the winter. We raise animals. Sometimes we even slaughter them, and run a smoker to preserve the meat. That tractor in the yard isn't yuppie "yard art", it's how we turn the soil, pull up stumps, and plow roads to survive the winter. Don't see any other lawns around here? Maybe there's a reason. Same with mega-mansions...
Before you decide to "live the country lifestyle", look into exactly what that is. Odds are, if you want to "change this and that" when you get here, you won't like it. And odds are, neither you nor your new neighbors are gonna be happy with you.
Hear, hear. I have lived 99% of my life in farm country. Some of my friends call where I live "out in the sticks." That is the way I like it. In the past we have had speculators come out into the area and try to convince farmers if they can get their farm land rezoned (they bought it cheap because it was zoned agriculture) they could make a killing and retire rich. These speculators want to turn it into subdivisions with crackerbox palaces on top of one another. The township officials (idiots, some of which moved in from the city) are all too happy to see more property tax revenue from increased development. In the few subdivisions that have cropped up more of the people that move in then go to the township meetings and complain that we don't have a Meijer store and other big city conveniences and want to change the landscape... If you want to live in the city, live in the city, but leave us alone. Good grief, where do they think the food from the Meijer store will come from?
Regards,
O.A.
Turn this from a wannabe urban-yuppie retirement community with an undercurrent of unemployed meth-heads to a thriving town like we were a half-dozen decades ago...
Of course, the retirees who are the local pullmongers would run me out on a rail... but at least we'd be milling rails again to run people out on...
I look it not as "daring", per se, but more like what Nat Taggart would consider "expedient to promote ones own business". If the town prospers as it once did, then businesses will, as well... and as they do, so will mine - if I do my part.
Otherwise we become - or grow - a suburban retirement destination, more than we already are. And that would make me ill.
For me, I've never been good at politics or selling. But I do agree with your goals. Best of luck.