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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMichigan Loses ‘Right To Farm’ This Week: A Farewell To Backyard Chickens and Beekeepers Read more a
Michigan residents lost their right to farm this week thanks to a new ruling by the Michigan Commission of Agriculture and Rural Development. Gail Philburn of the Michigan Sierra Club told Michigan Live, the new changes effectively remove Right to Farm Act protection for many urban and suburban backyard farmers raising small numbers of animals. Backyard and urban farming were previously protected by Michigans Right to Farm Act. The Commission ruled that the Right to Farm Act protections no longer apply to many homeowners who keep small numbers of livestock.
Kim White, who raises chickens and rabbits, said, They dont want us little guys feeding ourselves. They want us to go all to the big farms. They want to do away with small farms and I believe that is whats motivating it. The ruling will allow local governments to arbitrarily ban goats, chickens and beehives on any property where there are 13 homes within one eighth mile or a residence within 250 feet of the property, according to Michigan Public Radio. The Right to Farm Act was created in 1981 to protect farmers from the complaints of people from the city who moved to the country and then attempted to make it more urban with anti-farming ordinances. The new changes affect residents of rural Michigan too. It is not simply an urban or suburban concern.
Shady Grove Farm in Gwinn, Michigan is the six and a half acre home to 150 egg-laying hens that provide eggs to a local co-op and a local restaurant. The small Michigan farm also homes sheep for wool and a few turkeys and meat chickens to provide fresh healthy, local poultry. We produce food with integrity, Randy Buchler told The Blaze about Shady Grove Farm. Everything we do here is 100 percent natural we like to say its beyond organic. We take a lot of pride and care in what were doing here. Shady Grove Farm was doing its part to bring healthy, local, organic food to the tables of Gwinn residents, and it mirrors the attitudes of hundreds of other small farming operations in Michigan and thousands of others popping up around the nation. The ruling comes within days of a report by The World Health Organization that stated the world is currently in grave danger of entering a post-antibiotic era. The WHOs director-general Dr. Margaret Chan argued that the antibiotic use in our industrialized food supply is the worst offender adding to the global crisis. The Michigan Agriculture Commission passed up an opportunity to support one of the hottest trends in food in Michigan public demand for access to more local, healthy, sustainable food, Gail Philbin told MLive.
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1235774/michigan-loses-right-to-farm-this-week-a-farewell-to-backyard-chickens-and-beekeepers/#06YkO6mYfY2OxOcb.99
Fairgo
(1,571 posts)Imagine every home and hobby farm coordinating and sharing a locavore diet, apiaries in every neighborhood cooperative. Vertical gardens cascading down the highrise. This vision of community frightens our erstwhile masters...it transcends decades of incremental oppression in a single growing and canning season.
Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)that were fed from their toxic soils and and no longer need to be marked with country of origin. Your backyarrd chicken and eggs are unsafe and should be banned.
Fairgo
(1,571 posts)This is the flaw in globalisation, it denies community in favor of the borg. I like the image of eating the poisoned soil of a distant land...oppression tastes like chicken...horribly sad factory chicken. What would happen if there was a resistance movement of truck farmers and grange halls trading in black market eggs, uncut raw milk, and kilos of zucchini? Do farmers markets go underground? I am speaking lightly, but I am actually quite serious. The battles we must fight are for our food and our water. This is where the corporate golem must come out from behind the screen and show themselves for what they are. It is the one space where spin falls away. Everybody understands food in the end. Make a stand in the garden. Make them tear down the pole beans, confiscate the string cheese.
It's not just that TPTB will never admit the existence of alternatives to The Way The Smart People All Know That The World Must Be So You Peasants Stop Worrying About It.
It's that we must not even be allowed to try and find alternatives.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Blue_In_AK
(46,436 posts)It thrills me when I see them buzzing around my flowers in the springtime.
Liberal_in_LA
(44,397 posts)Ilsa
(61,698 posts)sendero
(28,552 posts).. just how blatantly ridiculous this shit gets before the people take real action.
This is untenable on any level.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)hatrack
(59,592 posts)Who do you think you ARE, growing your own food?!?!??
roody
(10,849 posts)MisterP
(23,730 posts)Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)on micro- and small-farms. I guess the powers-that-be like their recessions pure and undiluted.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)See what is happening here? This is horrible. How much longer will we tolerate this shit?
NutmegYankee
(16,201 posts)Only right-wingers like to farm. We Progressives buy our food at the supermarket like civilized people...
Response to Enthusiast (Reply #11)
oneofthe99 This message was self-deleted by its author.
Wounded Bear
(58,706 posts)and stop relying on gov't handouts.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)2014. We need to stop this nonsense now.
xchrom
(108,903 posts)ileus
(15,396 posts)means of making money my grandparents on my moms side ever had. They raised one beef, and two hogs every year and a huge garden for personal consumption.
Those 4 items raised 6 daughters...
My neighbors Across from me and to my immediate left both started raising chickens last year.
me b zola
(19,053 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)thanks to the San Diego City Council that allowed them, and in El Cajon (where it was a real fight) and in La Mesa, where it is about to pass.
Some areas of El Cajon and La Mesa are semi rural, City Heights, not so much.
Oh and yes, this is why lower offices matter just as much as the Presidency.
oneofthe99
(712 posts)handmade34
(22,757 posts)apples and oranges...
You are joking, right?
LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)The animal shelter is increasingly stuck with chickens that get dumped there once people discover that keeping them is hard work and buying bougie eggs is cheaper, legal chickenkeeping makes it harder to identify the cockfighting operations (because some groups here raise the same birds for cultural reasons) and the same dipshits that let their cats run loose now neglect chickens, with predictable results. My dad's found so many dead chickens in his front yard he started wondering if one of the neighbors was trying to curse him.
DebJ
(7,699 posts)clean, free of disease, and peaceful, without having to ban it.
LeftyMom
(49,212 posts)DebJ
(7,699 posts)at what happened to horses that she had to drive by every day when they retired in WV.
A farmer had split his land into lots, then sold it, creating an association of homeowners,
only about 40 or so, to see that the dirt roads get gravel and snow removal, other
minor things. My parents' lot was the very last one in the back, so they drove by
almost every other lot to get to and from their house.
On one of the lots, a woman had about 5 horses. She didn't have a well to water them,
and they only got enough water when she had opportunity to drive her pick up quite some distance
to a spring in the area and hauled all the water back. Also, she wasn't feeding them
anything supplemental, and the one field she had them in was eaten down to nubs
and mud, all the time. My parents were horrified, watching the animals slowly starve to
death. I saw them when I visited for the holidays, with ribs sticking out painfully, looking
like they were barely able to move. One time, I drove by and one of the horses was
lying their dead, or it looked that way. They did die. And she got more horses. And
still no well, and still, starving them.
My mother tried to find someone to do something about it. One of her calls was to the
county sheriff, and he said they really couldn't do anything. There are so many winding
roads and out of the way places where people are constantly abusing animals up there
he said, and they just don't have the resources to do anything about it.
At their annual meeting one year, the community association members confronted the
woman and her husband about it. The husband said "This is my wife's dream! How dare
you try to deny her, her life's dream!" I think she walked out of the meeting without
saying anything. More horses died. A few years later, she did finally get a well and
begin to feed them properly.
But all anyone could think was: It's your wife's dream to starve horses to death???!!!
mopinko
(70,208 posts)send them to the butcher, then send them at the pantry.
fwiw, people love chickens. i keep a small flock, and i have visitors constantly.
i have tiny farm. and i dont brag about what i have done. its a job.
but i tell ya what, there are kids on this block who have had quite the indelible impression made on them especially by my girls.
i think it will die down. it's exciting now. its new.
but it would be a great thing if as many people who could do it responsible disposed of their own garbage, and fed their children fresh eggs.
that last a lifetime, too.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)structures and with good reason. Americans today have little voice, we are being plowed under by politicians for hire. And many Americans today are bred to be subservient wimpy serfs.
factsarenotfair
(910 posts)The bees love it. If you Google for "clover lawn" you will get a lot of great articles.
I don't think they can stop you from doing this, can they?
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)as well as tiny purple and/or white violets that seem to be spreading all over my and my parents' lawns. I actually tried harvesting, to take a shot at making 'clover flour', but it was taking forever, so I assume people who actually do that don't cut off each leaf individually
factsarenotfair
(910 posts)Let me know if you ever make some muffins.
tblue37
(65,487 posts)so I end up with a lot of baby bunnies all over the lawn every summer.
factsarenotfair
(910 posts)Maybe the world needs a "Johnny Cloverseed."
mopinko
(70,208 posts)although it gives municipalities the right to regulate "farm animals" it changes no laws by itself.
i doubt this will change anything in detroit, where urban farming is one of the few bright spots.
most likely will keep a lot of stupid hoa rules alive, and allow a couple places where i never would want to live anyway to make rules against goats.
curious how it will turn out, but...
hopemountain
(3,919 posts)is 6 1/2 acres a bit more than an 1/8 of a mile? seems housing would have to be pretty dense for 13 homes in an 1/8 a mile or 250 feet away to have some chickens, etc. the story does not really say whether the farm is affected by the ruling.
Raksha
(7,167 posts)and the backlash will be more than it bargained for. The trend in many communities like mine is in the opposite direction, with local ordinances against backyard farming being removed. I belong to a local community gardening group, and just this week we received the exciting news that home gardeners can now sell their backyard produce at the local farmers' market (which opens tomorrow night), as long as they stay in a separate area from the commercial farmers.