Such laws, which seem informal, are broadly known as right-to-farm laws, however, they enhance this important dimension of property rights. Every state of the nation has some variant of these laws, most of which are more than three decades old, with the original promise of protecting urban sprawl and family farms.
We recently analyzed these laws in all 50 states since 2015 and found that only four state statutes provided the legal basis to protect farming from urban encroachment.
The Right to Agriculture Act also violates the collective rights of governance. Sixty percent of agricultural rights laws limit the authority of local governments to regulate the use of arable land.
Rather, these laws mostly protect large-scale industrial farming operations, reducing the nuisance capacity of rural people when they are polluted.
Instead of protecting multi-generational farmers from a deeper engagement with the land and their communities, 46 percent of right-to-agriculture laws provide immunity from trouble suits for agricultural enterprises that have been in operation for more than one year. Another 12 percent provide other time-specific protection after an enterprise is started.
Yet only 16 percent of rights-related laws provide immunity for property owners who were previously, such as farmers who live on their land and near their farms. For example, farmers in York County, Pennsylvania sued a newly formed industrial poultry imprisonment for a nuisance within a year of its construction. The trial court stayed the trial, inter alia, stating that the operation had received approval for its waste management plan more than a year ago.
