Welcome to the Country.....here's your gas mask.

Tracey D. Shiflett, AICP

People looking for an alternative to suburbia are migrating to rural America in large numbers.  According to Choices Magazine as population increases, a desire for larger lots in less urban settings as well as advances in communications and transportation have increased the demand for low density housing.  

Imagining that they will be living next to bucolic farms in pastoral settings, many of these new country dwellers are not prepared for the reality of living in agricultural areas.

How rural living is often imagined

These newcomers to farm country are often unpleasantly surprised  by smell, dust and noise from adjacent farms.   And by smell, I’m not talking roses, but intense, sometimes eye-watering stink!  As John Klein of Southern Central Michigan describes it in Modern Farmer 

“Close your windows and go the bathroom in your toilet for 
a week. Don’t flush. Let it sit there for another two weeks.”  

Read More> Oh the smell! Zoning battle rages over farm odors

 

 

 

SUBURBAN EXPANSION INTO FARMLAND

 

In her article in Choices Magazine Lori Lynch’s research shows that the amount of U.S. farmland has declined by an estimated one million acres annually over the last 60 years. The number of acres consumed per person for new housing have almost doubled in the last 20 years.  According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) the proportion of the land base in agricultural uses has declined from 63 percent in 1949 to 51 percent in 2007.  The USDA found on the basis of the 28-year period, United States residents added an average of 0.6 M hectares of urban land every year between 1982 and 2010, peaking in the 1990s.

According to Lynch,  in metro areas such as Washington, DC the rate at which land is being consumed exceeds population growth by almost 2.5 times. Since 1994, residential lots larger than 10 acres have accounted for more than half of all land developed.  This change in land use brings challenges to farmers who are increasingly seeing an increase in non-farm uses which can be a source of conflict with existing farm practices.
 

There are many reasons that this conversion of farm land to non-farm uses is happening.  One of the most important reasons is that as aging farmers retire, there are few new farmers to replace them.  As of 2012 USDA Agricultural Census, farmers aged 65 and older constituted almost 20% of all farmers while only 2.6% of farmers were under the age of 35. The biggest reason for so few young farmers today, is that buying enough land to start an operation is too expensive.  

With little opportunity to sell their land for agricultural purposes, farmers are selling off some or all of their property to residential and business developers. A Fluvanna County, Virginia farmer once told me that his farm was his 401K.  Instead of investing in stocks and bonds, he invested in his farm.  With no children interested in farming who could provide him a retirement income in exchange for the farm, he was forced to sell his land.   

Read More>America Running Out of Farmers?        

WHO'S PROBLEM IS IT?

 

Many states have “Right to Farm” laws that protect farms from nuisance lawsuits, and most agricultural practices are not considered nuisances if they do not adversely affect public health and safety. 

According to Andrew C. Hanson in his article Brewing Land Use Conflicts: Wisconsin's Right to Farm Law most states have enacted right to farm laws that specifically preclude nuisance law suits against farms codifying the "coming to the nuisance" defense which defendants often raise when a plaintiff moves to the area after the alleged nuisance arose.  However, he noted that some right to farm laws have gone too far, siting Bormann v. Kossuth County Board  and Buchanan v. Simplot Feeders where the courts held that immunity to nuisance law suits constituted an unconstitutional taking. 

Because agricultural operations are largely immune to nuisance lawsuits there is little incentive for them change their operational practices or mitigate nuisances except when there is a legal requirement to do so or there is a justifiable return on investment. Farmers put up with smells, dirt and flies because addressing them has little or no return on investment to them.  Therefore, it is generally up to adjacent property owners to mitigate any problems.  

Read More>Your Neighbors' Right to Farm


CONTROLLING NUISANCES 

My experience with farm life came when I had to opportunity to visit many farming operations when I worked with a large animal veterinarian.  I  quickly learned that  farming is a dirty, gritty business that produces intense smells, dust, flies and noise. Later in life I lived next to a large dairy farm in Northern Virginia, some mornings, when there was no breeze, the ammonia smell was awful.   

Smells from farms typically generates the most complaints from adjacent property owners. There are measures that can be taken to minimize smells and other perceived nuisances associated with farming, such as buffering, dust control, runoff control and other best management practices. When I was in the Navy operating nuclear power plants, the mantra was “time, distance and shielding” to reduce exposure to radiation.  The same concept applies to smells and dust.  

According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) there is no single, ideal management practice system for controlling a particular pollutant in all situations. Rather, the system should be designed based on the type of pollutant; the source of the pollutant; the cause of the pollution at the source; the agricultural, climatic, and environmental conditions; the pollution reduction goals.

One of the most effective means of mitigation is establishing Vegetative Environmental Buffers (VEB) to incrementally mitigate odors because the increase the time it takes for the smell/dust to travel through the buffer allowing it to dissipate, larger buffers increase the distance from the source and buffers that include trees removes some of the dust, gas, and microbial constituents of airstreams and enhance localized air dispersion by increasing mechanical turbulence. 

 

Because farm operations are largely immune from nuisance complaints and there is little economic incentive for them to control perceived nuisances on their property, any remedies to control smells, dust and other nuisances will be the responsibility of the adjacent property owners.

WHAT'S NEXT?

 

If historic trends continue, conversion of farmland to non-farm uses will continue unabated for the foreseeable future.  This means that the inevitable conflict between farm and non-farm uses will also continue.  In my next post I will address how I think rural land use planners can minimize these conflicts.