My home state of Nebraska(I know, I know, hard to tell that from my moniker) has had an anti-corporate farming provision in the state constitution for over twenty years now. You can read the wording of I-300 at the Center for Rural Affairs website. The bill was passed as large corporations and insurance companies bought up parcels of land as small farmers were driven off the land due to the farm crises of the 1980s. A federal judge has recently overturned the ban on corporate farming for two reasons. First, the Americans with Disabilities Act was said to be violated in that hte bill required a family member to be involved in the daily operations of the farm. Second, interstate commerce was said to be violated as well. Keep in mind that Nebraska's bill was modeled by other states, which puts their in jeopardy as well.


Some interesting tidbits:



North Platte Bulletin article

Lincoln Journal-Star article

Anti-corporate farming resource

Questions for debate:

1.)Did I-300 violate the ADA law and interstate commerce as the judge said?

2.)Are corporations not to be limited at all by citizens?

3.)Pretend you live in a rural state-should a corporate farm be allowed to buy land near you, and bring in 20,000 head of swine or cattle? At what point does environmental and employment concerns equal that of economic necessity and free enterprise?

I see what you are getting at, and I am certainly no big fan of the obliteration of small businesses by giant corporations. This is a problem which bothers me, because I see no good way around it. Since we are stuck with a legal definition of corporations as "persons," we are required to give them, more or less, the same rights to commerce that we give individuals. (At least as far as I know; I'm an economic idiot.) How, then, can we have anything at all like a "free market" (even a reasonably regulated one, as I would advocate) and still keep some control over these monster corporations? I see no answer short of an economy controlled to a far greater extent than I would advocate.

1. The violation of the disability act seems a little odd to me, although I sort of follow the logic. The violation of the regulation of interstate commerce seems like a stronger argument. This law does, indeed, restrict the ability of corporations to do what they please.

2. Unfortunately, the legal answer seems to be that you cannot require a corporation to follow restrictions which do not also apply to other kinds of businesses. I think there are some exceptions; certain regulations only apply to businesses that X number of employees, and so on. However, in general, I don't think the law lets you say that a small business can operate such-and-such an operation, but a large corporation cannot. As I have said, this doesn't make me happy. I don't like, one little bit, the increasing dominance of the American economic landscape by Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and so on. (Whatever happened to the local new book store? There are still a few around, but not many.)

3. This is not entirely hypothetical for me. I live in a rural part of Tennessee, on forty acres of wooded land. Some other people own some wooded land next to me. They don't live on it, like I do; they just own it. Since they don't have to look at it, they chose to clear-cut the trees and leave bare earth behind. They then plan to dig up the earth itself and get as much rock as possible out of it. The next step, they say, is to use the bare land as a place to store manure from a nearby pig farm. As far as I can tell, this is all legal business practice, although it means that I have to listen to loud machines all day long (when I am trying to sleep after working all night long); that the view from my land is now an unspeakably ugly one; and that I expect at any time to have to live with the stench of pig manure. But that's free enterprise for you. And it's just an individual, not a giant corporation.

My point is that, whatever restrictions are appropriate for business practices, they should apply to all businesses, and not just giant corporations. As to how one can stop the onslaught of the gargantuan businesses, I have no idea. That would require an utterly different American culture.

I think corporations should be limited by citizens, which is why we have antitrust laws to break up monopolies. The problem is the population's general perception that corporations, big agribusiness in this instance, have every right to control 100% of the market without any checks and balances. Citizens first have to perceive a problem, and second, know that in a democracy they can do something about it, and not just at a voting booth.

Part of the reason for this perception could be that those large corporations, who control the mass media, are working constantly to put that perception out there. You rarely or never see questions about the legitimacy of corporate personhood or the legitimacy of 5 gigantic conglomerates controlling an entire market in the mainstream media. Why would you see that? It'd be like a jeweller going on television and telling you he sells stolen goods.

What my thriving small farming community has done over the past 25 years is set up its own market following many of the principles listed in that bill, and then educate people about food so they can make an educated decision about where to buy.

Education is key. Real people have to work much harder to educate people about anything that goes against the "empire", since corporate "people" control most of what the average American sees - but we do have outlets such as the internet, public access TV, community radio, flyering, publishing your own print zine, etc. Little by little this builds communities that support democratic, independent small businesses like mom and pop shops & restaurants, independent music & bands, & small farmers.

As far as I understand it, the requirement in I-300 is that one person who owns the land has to be involved in the day to day workings of the farm. One of the six plaintiffs is a man who due to an unfortunate accident, is confined to a wheel chair and thus, won't be tossing hay-bails any time soon. By forming a corporation, he can do the paper work and be involved in farming, while he hires non-family workers to do the physical labor for him. By keeping him from forming a corporation, it was successfully argued that it violated the American with disabilities act. I agree that the interstate commerce thing is a stronger case.