Abstract
In Empty Fields, Empty Promises: A State-by-State Guide to Understanding and Transforming the Right to Farm, an interdisciplinary team of sociologists and legal experts evaluate Right to Farm (RTF) laws in the United States. Through an analysis of court cases, authors Loka Ashwood, Aimee Imlay, Lindsay Kuehn, Allen Franco, and Danielle Diamond succinctly answer the question: Who benefits from RTF laws? Spoiler alert: when going to court, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) (those with over 1,000 animals) are the most likely to win RTF cases. On the other hand, sole proprietors—the farm type most closely aligned with the farmer archetype—have won the lowest percentage of RTF cases. This research reveals the painful irony of RTF laws. The broad purpose of RTF laws is to preserve and protect farmland from urbanization and suburban sprawl. Yet these laws serve industrial agriculture and perpetuate agricultural consolidation.
Originating during the 1970s in the context of the farm crisis, RTF laws arose as legislators sought to prevent the “sue-happy urbanite” (p. 4) from undoing local agrarian communities due to their unfamiliarity with farming life, including the sights and smells that accompany agricultural production. However, these laws quickly became tools for agriculture and related industries, such as timber and mining. CAFOs have won 69 percent of cases as plaintiffs or defendants, whereas sole proprietor farmers have won 41 percent, the lowest of all party types in this comparison. These findings alone demonstrate the incongruence of RTF laws' stated intent and outcome.
This analysis of RTF policy and application is the case par excellence as to how “[a]gricultural exceptionalism has become corporate exceptionalism” (p. 11). Ashwood and coauthors summarize how certain actors have framed food production as a public good and thus operate outside the legal frameworks applied to other industries. Through this narrative, CAFOs covered by RTF laws use these protections to avoid compensating neighbors and communities for adverse socio-ecological outcomes associated with these operations, such as decreased air and water quality and mental and physical health issues like depression and asthma.
The book is composed of short chapters for each state that describe location-specific RTF law history, application, interaction with local governance, attorney fees, and the related implications. Each chapter begins with the state’s trend in the number of farm operations and farmland since enacting RTF laws, then poses the question, “But what do [the state’s] RTF laws do in practice?” In many cases, the number of operations and the amount of land in farming have declined, clearly demonstrating the failure of such laws to protect farms and farmland. These findings are not surprising in the broader context of the agrarian transition in which, across the United States, farm consolidation has occurred in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In other cases, there are mixed results in terms of the increase or decrease of the number of farms or farmland. In New Hampshire, for example, the number of farms increased by 20 percent, and at the same time, the state lost 20 percent of the acres in farmland. In this rare case, the authors hint at how other policies, such as the Granite State Farm to Plate Food Policy geared toward supporting small-scale farmers, may be more effective than RTF laws at supporting farmers.
Additionally, each chapter includes a state-specific table that summarizes when operations are immune and not immune from lawsuits, other important details (such as attorney fees), and the percentage of U.S. states with similar RTF provisions. The authors outline why these aspects are crucial for understanding RTF laws. For example, in the case of attorney fees, the authors note how the assessment of costs for “frivolous” cases, often not clearly defined, can, in some states, deter the filing of lawsuits. The narrative portion of each chapter regularly highlights a particular case or two illustrative of the provisions being discussed. Thus, in just a few pages, readers understand the key aspects of each state’s RTF laws and how the state compares nationally.
In the conclusion, the authors explore three specific avenues for addressing the incongruencies of RTF laws: market power and the government, changing or repealing RTF laws, and the constitution. The first entails curtailing consolidation through moratoriums on agrifood-related mergers, enforcing anti-trust laws like the Packers and Stockyards Act, and reexamining government subsidies, which currently benefit the largest operations. Second, the authors call for reforming RTF laws by distinguishing the existing provisions that benefit what authors call “agriculture of the home” (p. 266) or serve CAFOs and business firms. Further, the authors suggest how the abolition of RTF laws may be appropriate, given how some states allow these laws to undermine local governance and decision-making. Finally, the authors turn to the constitution and related court arguments to explore how RTF laws are a matter of democracy, comparing these laws with other right to home, food, health, or environment laws. These broad areas offer readers a sense of potential interventions to align RTF with stated goals.
My one critique is the authors’ assumption that family farms are not CAFOs. The authors critique RTF laws for not including specific language supporting “family farms.” However, this critique fails to understand that family farms can be—and are—CAFOs. Farm owners' biological or marriage relations do not guarantee that the operation is small or midscale with positive social and environmental outcomes. This slippage further illuminates how pernicious these assumptions of family farms have become, even among those looking for ways to revitalize rural communities, redistribute power, and promote positive social-ecological relations.
Overall, this book offers a compelling case to revisit or even abolish RTF laws in favor of policies empirically shown to support the reversal of consolidation in farming and strengthen rural community power over local environments and health. The introduction and conclusion chapters are particularly appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in Rural Sociology, Sociology of Food and Agriculture, and Rural Studies. In comparison, the remaining chapters focused on state-specific RTF details are useful for practitioners engaging with issues related to land and farming. Given this structure, the book is not intended to be a cover-to-cover read. Instead, the introduction and conclusion serve as a tool for grasping the sociological implications of these laws in the context of agricultural consolidation and rural community restructuring. At the same time, the state-specific details offer legal, educational, and other agricultural practitioners specific information for their respective geographic areas.