Right-to-farm laws: Do they resolve land use conflicts?

Excerpt

UNDERLYING much of the farmland controversy are local land use conflicts between farmers and rural and suburban residents and industrial users. The irony of the situation is obvious: While farming creates and maintains the atmosphere and bucolic landscape so many wish to be part of, it is the business of agriculture, which mandates certain practices and functions, that many find offensive. The result is conflict that prompts nonfarming neighbors to attempt to restrict or eliminate agricultural practices. This often translates itself into a nonfarming majority that employs land use controls to regulate farming or that resorts to nuisance lawsuits to enjoin or restrict certain practices. What many seek, then, is farmland without farms!

About 30 states have “right-to-farm” laws to address these conflicts. Although they vary considerably, all of the laws attempt to do two things. First, they seek to supersede the common law of nuisance. Second, they favor agricultural uses of land above all others. The statutes thus attempt to establish a “first-in-time, first-in-right” logic whereby pre-existing agricultural uses have a primacy against all others. The presumption is this: If a farm constitutes a nuisance, it does …