Farming laws?

sculley

Can anyone shed light on the laws they are trying to pass on not being able to grow your own vegetables.

kitkatkmt

Is it a local or federal law? And there must be some loopholes, as they can't ban everyone from having a personal garden. Do you have any further information on where you're hearing this? I'm curious.

almc170

This sounds a little extreme...are you talking about the proposed regulation of child labor on farms or something else? Can you provide a link?

daffodilsoup

Also requesting a link - I would be very interested to read this.

live2dream

What?! I haven't heard of this. Sounds terrible.

BAMFMeredith

I have tons of friends who grow their own fruits and veggies--and a handful that have their own chickens for eggs (welcome to Austin, TX, hippie paradise), so this would not go over well! Is this a local or federal proposed law?

desert_rhino

Can anyone shed light on the laws they are trying to pass on not being able to grow your own vegetables.

I haven't heard a thing about this. What are you referring to?

susannamarie

Are you talking about the food safety modernization act?

cmayfield3

Edited to remove inaccurate information.

susannamarie

It has an exemption for farms with average gross income under $500,000 who do most of their marketing directly to consumers. It was signed in in January 2011.

As originally proposed (iirc?) it was to be applied to farms with an agricultural income or potential income of over $1,000, so you'd still have to grow a crapton of vegetables to exceed it.

It is also possible that the OP is referring to a local regulation to ban 'unsightly' vegetable gardens or something similar.

Edited to remove no-longer relevant quotes.

cmayfield3

Are you talking about the food safety modernization act?

This is what I thought, too.

OP, if this is what you mean, it 1) died in the House, and 2) never would have prohibited growing your own vegetables.

Huh? No it didn't, it passed a while back, but with an exemption for farms with average gross income under $500,000 who do most of their marketing directly to consumers. It was signed in in January 2011.

My bad; I was looking at a previous version. I will edit my post to avoid confusion.

thefreebiemom

I saw an article once where an HOA made a family tear down their vegetable garden because it was "unsightly". I haven't heard of any laws to that affect.

megsmom2

Monsanto is pushing outlawing small foodgrowing operations.....because they want to own the rights to all available seeds and keep them under their patents. This would include home gardening. They've already sued farmers who save seeds for next year's crops...and won. They've sued farmers whose fields were wind fertilized by the neighboring farms. Read Michael Pollan 's books about food and food production....interesting and Scary stuff.

susannamarie

I saw an article once where an HOA made a family tear down their vegetable garden because it was "unsightly". I haven't heard of any laws to that affect.

There's also the Oak Park woman who ended up in trouble with the city for vegetables in the front yard -- I believe you can find it quickly by googling 'oak park hates veggies'.

AmyRhubarb

I know what you're talking about, and as ridiculous as it sounds, it really was (may still be, I don't know) something they were working on - Bill HR875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. Basically it would have federally regulated every little garden, vegetable stand, farmers market, etc. There's a lot of info about it on the web - some extreme views and some not so much, but really kind of scary when you look at it from any angle. There's talk of not being able to store or trade seeds, to only be able to buy them each year from a company who's seeds are sterile, that is your squash plant will gorw and give you nice zucchini all summer, but if you save some seeds from the veggies to plant next year, they won't grow because they've been modified.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I personally think it's all part of a control issue and power grab by somebody -the government or the big corporaitons, like Monsanto, or both - control the food supply, and how and when you can grow it or buy it. I live in the central valley of California - known agriculturally as the bread basket to the world. From Wikipedia: "On less than 1 percent of the total farmland in the United States, the Central Valley produces 8 percent of the nation’s agricultural output by value: 17 billion USD in 2002." But there's been an ongoing water battle out here for years between the farmers and the government - irrigation is key to farming here, and the farmers are paying for their water rights. Yet even in a year of heavy rainfall, they aren't being given the water they need, paid for or were promised, only a small percentage of it, and all that extra water & runoff is going out to sea. Family owned and operated farms are disappearing, fields lie fallow, and thousands of farm workers have been jobless - it's been a big problem here.

Coupled with bills wanting to control what seeds you can buy, wanting to regulate storage of seeds, small farms, and on and on, it just seems like a bunch of steps to keep squeezing out the independent farmers, families who have lived here and farmed the same land for generations, and what does that leave us with? Getting produce from other countries or big multinational agribusinesses.

There are also areas of the country that don't allow you to collect rainwater, too - Google that one. People who catch runoff into a barrel and use it to water their yards & gardens have been busted - the city or county says no, that's not your to collect. So much for trying to conserve.

Here's a link to some info about Bill HR875, but if you Google it you'll find more info.

ew64

OMG, Rush was just talking about this! I only caught the tail end of it (because I was outside in my garden!), but he was saying that government regulation of the small organic farmer was in the near future. As if they don't control enough already!

sculley

http://charlestonteaparty.org/is-congress-about-to-outlaw-your-vegetable-garden/

sculley

I know what you're talking about, and as ridiculous as it sounds, it really was (may still be, I don't know) something they were working on - Bill HR875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. Basically it would have federally regulated every little garden, vegetable stand, farmers market, etc. There's a lot of info about it on the web - some extreme views and some not so much, but really kind of scary when you look at it from any angle. There's talk of not being able to store or trade seeds, to only be able to buy them each year from a company who's seeds are sterile, that is your squash plant will gorw and give you nice zucchini all summer, but if you save some seeds from the veggies to plant next year, they won't grow because they've been modified.

At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I personally think it's all part of a control issue and power grab by somebody -the government or the big corporaitons, like Monsanto, or both - control the food supply, and how and when you can grow it or buy it. I live in the central valley of California - known agriculturally as the bread basket to the world. From Wikipedia: "On less than 1 percent of the total farmland in the United States, the Central Valley produces 8 percent of the nation’s agricultural output by value: 17 billion USD in 2002." But there's been an ongoing water battle out here for years between the farmers and the government - irrigation is key to farming here, and the farmers are paying for their water rights. Yet even in a year of heavy rainfall, they aren't being given the water they need, paid for or were promised, only a small percentage of it, and all that extra water & runoff is going out to sea. Family owned and operated farms are disappearing, fields lie fallow, and thousands of farm workers have been jobless - it's been a big problem here.

Coupled with bills wanting to control what seeds you can buy, wanting to regulate storage of seeds, small farms, and on and on, it just seems like a bunch of steps to keep squeezing out the independent farmers, families who have lived here and farmed the same land for generations, and what does that leave us with? Getting produce from other countries or big multinational agribusinesses.

There are also areas of the country that don't allow you to collect rainwater, too - Google that one. People who catch runoff into a barrel and use it to water their yards & gardens have been busted - the city or county says no, that's not your to collect. So much for trying to conserve.

Here's a link to some info about Bill HR875, but if you Google it you'll find more info.

I will look at the bill. Thanks a bunch

susannamarie

http://charlestonteaparty.org/is-congress-about-to-outlaw-your-vegetable-garden/

Sculley, this is an old blog post -- notice the date is 2010. The law's been passed, with the amendments that this blog post was advocating.

Onesnap

Actually, I volunteer at a Farm.

So, the law as is states now is to not save seeds from patented seed sources. Monsanto is evil. At this point they are suing a lot of small family farmers for trying to save the patented seeds. In many cases the patented seed cross-pollinates with theirs (from another farm). This is a big issue and is discussed in great detail in Food Inc. (a must see).

So, the laws are not for the single family homeowner doing a garden.

However, the best way around this is to only use heirloom organic seed (as I do, from www.rareseeds.com)