I’ve spent extensive time over the last five years in Detroit, Michigan, living there for periods, and visiting family. I can safely say, while I love Detroit, it’s not for me to call home.
However, despite knowing that I wouldn’t live there permanently, there is one place that lives in my heart forever, that I think fondly of every Saturday, and that is the Eastern market farmers market.
The Eastern market, located just outside downtown Detroit, is hands down the greatest farmers market I have ever been to, and while my dad says there are a few out there that are better, he’s yet to take me to any of them.
The eastern market is my Disneyland. It’s one of my most favorite places on earth, and I can’t help but feel like all my friends are in the same place every time I visit.
My friends, the American farmers.
It’s no secret to most that the American food system is and has been in jeopardy for a long time. If covid taught us anything, it’s that our food systems are weak, and any little bump in the road could cause the system to collapse, leaving many without access to the food they need to survive. The solution to this is simple, but not easy. We have to put the power back in the hands of the people, back into the hands of the consumer, and most importantly we have to put the dollar back in the hand of the American farmer.
There is something so unique and special about the relationship one can cultivate with their farmer when they really get to know them. I was pondering this on my very long drive from Detroit to Atlanta.
I had a trunk full of food. I came back with a ½ bushel of apples, 15 pounds of beef, four dozen eggs, three bags of flour, three different raw cheeses, a bag of locally made granola, and a few other assorted items. I was so excited about this haul and had been waiting until I could get up to Detroit on a Saturday so I could stock up on the things I had been missing.
I bit into an apple that I bought from Travis and was immediately reminded why I love them-and him- so much. These are the best apples I’ve ever had. They’re sweet and tart with a slightly lemon-y taste. They’re reminiscent of the sweet tart candy, truly, and they are appropriately named “Ludacrisp”. I have never had a better apple, especially not down south.
As I was enjoying this apple I was genuinely overcome with my love and affection for these people that grow and make my food. I began to think about how truly fortunate I was, how truly miraculous it was that I had just had an extensive conversation with my apple guy about his wife and family. His wife was nine months pregnant, due any day, they were having twins, he was so excited, but nervous, like he was for the first baby, but even more so this time. These are their 4th and 5th babies. We had brought him some old children’s books the boys were no longer reading, and he was thrilled. We talked about thanksgiving, the magic of the holidays, the excitement of the new babies, how the other children were feeling about the babies, how my travels had been, and anything else we could think of. Then, I bought my half a bushel of apples, and carried on my way. Not to sound dramatic, but I felt like I could taste the love in the apples. How special it was to know that Travis had grown these apples on his family farm, that they were his favorite apples, although sometimes the kids prefer the less tart varieties they grow, how lucky I was to experience this farm to table moment.
I came on a mission for four things. Beef, apples, cheese, and flour. I walked up to Hyatt farms, so excited to see Denis, and Emma, but mostly excited for the ground beef. Five dollars a pound for the best ground beef you’ll ever eat. Sometimes it feels too good to be true. I lived off ground beef and scrambled eggs when I was in Detroit and I had missed it since leaving.
Dennis and I were happy to see each other as we also talked about my travels and where I was headed next. I told him I had traveled specifically to stock up on ground beef. We laughed and chatted for several minutes and I left with a big full of meat to last me the next few months.
I headed to Randy next, our milk guy. He may have been the most excited to see me. He appreciates my affinity for vintage dresses and says that I remind him of the women he knew in the 90’s back when we saw more traditional displays of femininity more often. This was a special moment for me, and from then on, he would often compliment whatever vintage dress I had dawned that day. He also grows the best flour and cornmeal I’ve ever had, and sells the greatest raw cheese and milk. His face lit up when I approached, and we, too, talked for several minutes before I stocked up and left.
The meaningfulness of these connections may seem exaggerated, but this is what food is supposed to be. This is what food was for the longest time. It’s only recently that we’ve begun to lose sight of the connection from the farmer to consumer, and even before then we were the farmers ourselves. In a world where we hardly know where our food comes from anymore, to get to have such close personal relationships with my farmers means the world to me, and I share these stories in hopes that you too can build these relationships with your local farmer as well. Become a regular somewhere. Shop local as often as you can. Frequent the local farmers market. Big changes don’t happen overnight. They happen through small changes over time.
Joel Salatin is Offered USDA Position
Earlier this evening, the day after Donald Trump was elected president of the United States (again), news broke that Joel Salatin has been offered a position by the Trump team within the USDA, and he has accepted.
“I’ve been contacted by the Trump transition team to hold some sort of position within the USDA and have accepted one of the six “Advisor to the Secretary” spots. My favorite congressman, Thomas Massie from Kentucky, has agreed to go in as Secretary of Agriculture.” –The Lunatic Farmer
For those who don’t know, Joel Salatin is a regenerative organic farmer. We interviewed him several years ago, while the article is quite old you can read it here if you’re interested.
Joel Salatin has made many appearances on the Joe Rogan podcast and written several books on his experience in regenerative agriculture. It is my belief that the Trump administration offering him this position was an excellent move towards the promised “Make America Healthy Again” campaign that Trump and Kennedy ran on.
Additionally, it appears as though Thomas Massie has been offered the position of Secretary of Agriculture. According to his website both Joel Salatin and Thomas Massie have accepted their offers. While I know less about Thomas Massie, a quick search on social media shows him pictured with guys like RFK jr while being a staunch advocate for the legalization of raw milk, which is a positive in our book.
For more on my thoughts and feelings about this election, read this article.
Poll Shows Many People Would be Willing to Pay More for Greener Farming
Researchers asked 600 Finnish citizens what they would be willing to pay to ensure your food was coming from farms that promote biodiversity and mitigate climate change.
Results from the survey showed that an overwhelming 79% of participants would be willing to pay more for food that was sustainably farmed. The majority of participants reported they would be willing to pay a monthly sum of 16 Euros, or 228 Euros a year. This amounts to 245 Euros per hectare of Finnish farmland a year.
Currently, citizens pay 160 Euros a year in annual government subsidies for each hectare of organic farmland in Finland.
Of the 21% who said they would not pay more for diversified cropping, half of those said they were unable to afford the added cost.
Ultimately, a system that relies on consumers to pay for more sustainable agriculture shouldn’t impoverish people, or create a hierarchy where only those who can afford it get good quality food.
Monocrop farming is becoming more common practice in Finland and all around the world. Monocrop farming can lead to a decline in soil quality and biodiversity as well as causing other problems. Diverse cropping on the other hand, can increase carbon sequestration in the soil, boost biodiversity, introduce new pollinators into the environment, and promote an increase in food production.
Interview With Joel Salatin, Polyface Farms
Joel Salatin is an American farmer and author. He owns Polyface Farms, which is known for its small scale unconventional farming methods. Months ago I heard Joel on a Joe Rogan podcast and was immediately blown away. It’s not very often that we hear people discuss the gut microbiome on one of the most popular podcasts in the country.
Here’s that podcast. I highly recommend listening to it if you have the time.
Along with discussing the gut microbiome, Joel talked about his farm, Polyface Farms. Polyface Farms is located in Virginia, and they do things a little differently than most. The land that is now Polyface farms was purchased by Joel’s parents in 1961. They’re all about regenerative farming through sustainable practices, like pasture-raised meat, carbon sequestration, and working in a seasonal cycle.
In short, it’s a dream come true for someone like myself who is all about organic eco-friendly agriculture, so naturally, I had to ask Joel a couple of questions.
The older generation is a big fan of talking about life when they were young. My grandfather loves to talk about the fact that he was raised on cow’s milk, and he turned out “just fine.” The difference, of course, is that the milk he was raised on was unpasteurized small scale cows milk. What encouraged you to get into small scale sustainable farming? Does it relate back to how you were raised or did you have some sort of revelation in life? Feel free to comment on how things have changed if you have any thoughts on that.
My paternal grandfather was a charter subscriber to Rodale’s Organic Gardening and Farming Magazine when it came out in the late 1940s. He always wanted to farm but never did. He had a very large garden, though, and sold extra produce to neighbors and corner grocers. My dad received his no-chemical indoctrination, then, from Grandpa, so I’m the third generation in the compost tradition. My Dad was a financial wizard and did accounting work all his life. After flying Navy bombers in WWII, he went to Indiana University on the GI bill and then headed off to Venezuela, South America as a bilingual accountant with Texas Oil Company. His long-range goal was a farm in a developing country and Venezuela seemed as good as any. After about 7 years he’d saved up enough to buy 1,000 acres in the highlands of Venezuela and began farming. The goal was dairy and broilers. My older brother and I were born during that time, and things looked bright. But then came a junta and the ouster of Peres Jimenez and animosity toward anything American; we fled the back door as the machine guns came in the front door; lost everything and after exhausting all attempts at protection, (we) came back to the U.S. Easter Sunday 1961, landing in Philadelphia. Mom grew up in Ohio and Texas and all their family was in Ohio and Indiana, but Dad’s heart was still in Venezuela and he hoped after the political turmoil settled to be able to return to our farm.
With that in mind, he wanted to be within a day’s drive of Washington D.C. so he could get to the Venezuelan Embassy quickly and easily to do paperwork and return. That never happened, but it’s why we ended up in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. When I hit 41, I remember thinking: “If I lost it all, would I start over?” That’s what Dad and Mom did in 1961. I was 4. Dad did his accounting work, and Mom was a high school health and physical ed teacher; that off-farm income paid the mortgage and within 10 years the land was paid off. Dad combined his ecology with his economic understanding to create some broad principles: animals move; mobile infrastructure; direct marketing; carbon-driven fertility. I had my first flock of laying hens when I was 10 years old and then added a garden. By 14 years old, I was our main salesman at the local Curb Market, a Depression-era hold-over that foreshadowed today’s farmers’ markets. With only 3 vendors, it struggled but after a couple of years, we had a growing and steady clientele for our pastured meats, poultry, eggs, produce, and dairy products (yogurt, butter, cottage cheese). We closed it down when I went off to college and the other two elderly matrons at the market quite as well so by the time I came home, that market and all of its wonderful grandfathered food safety exemptions were gone forever.
I’ve always said we were about 20 years ahead of our time. Operating that market during my teen years of early 1970s as the nascent back-to-the-land hippie movement germinated was not easy, but the lessons were invaluable when I returned to the farm and started building a clientele on my own in 1980, long before modern farmers’ markets. Teresa and I married in 1980, remodeled the attic of the farmhouse, and lived there for 7 years until Mom and Dad moved out from downstairs to a mobile home parked outside the yard. My Mom’s mother had lived there for 10 years and passed away, making that spot available. As an investigative reporter at the local daily newspaper, I realized every business was desperate for people who would show up on time, put in a full days’ work without whining, and actually creatively think through better ways of doing things all made me highly employable. Living on $300 a month, driving a $50 car, growing all of our own, cutting our own firewood for winter warmth, not having a TV—all these things enabled us even without a high salary to squirrel away half the paycheck. Within a couple of years we had saved enough to live on for a year. I walked out of that office Sept. 24, 1982, with a one-year cash nest egg and the jeering of every person I knew” “He’s throwing his life away.” “All that talent and he’s going to waste it on a farm.” “Don’t you know you can’t make any money farming?”
We succeeded.
While we were watching the podcast you did with Joe Rogan, my dad and I had several “Wow!” moments listening to you. One of us would be in the kitchen, and we would run into the living room where the podcast was playing, and share a look of absolute awe. “This guy is talking about the stuff that we talk about! And he’s on Joe Rogan!” We don’t know many people who talk about gut health the way we do. How did you learn about the importance of the body’s microbiome? Is there a correlation between your knowledge of the microbiome and how you run your farm?
Perhaps the most profound truth in life is that everything we see floats in an ocean of invisible beings. With electronic microscopes, we can now see many of these things, but because we can’t see them with the naked eye, they are not in our momentary conscience. It’s hard to forget the microbes floating in the air, on our skin, in our eyes, nostrils, and intestines. Our farm’s wellness philosophy stems from Antoine Béchamp, the French contemporary and nemesis of Louis Pasteur. While Pasteur promoted the germ theory and busied himself destroying and sterilizing, Beauchamp advanced the terrain theory and encouraged people to think about basic immunity. Rather than sterilization, he encouraged sanitation. He encouraged folks to get more sleep, drink more and better water (much of the water at that time was putrid) and eat better food. Along came Sir Albert Howard half a century later adding the soil dimension to this basic wellness premise.
In general, we believe nature’s default position is fundamentally wellness and if it’s not well, we humans probably did something to mess it up. That’s a far cry from assuming wellness is like catching lightning in a bottle, and some sort of sickness fairy hovers over the planet dropping viral stardust willy nilly. Sickness and disease, whether in humans, plants, or animals are not the problem in and of themselves; they simply manifest weaknesses developed in the unseen world. Every sickness or disease we’ve ever had on our farm was our fault. We may have selected the wrong seedstock, crowded things, created incubators for pathogens. You can stress things a lot of different ways. But our assumption when confronted with non-wellness is not to assume we missed a vaccine or a pharmaceutical, but rather to ask “what did we do to break down the immunological function of this plant or animal?” That leads to far more profound truth than assuming we didn’t select the right connection from the chemistry lab.
The fact that today people actually talk about the microbiome in polite company is a fantastic societal breakthrough. Hopefully, it will continue.
The current “pandemic” resulted in a total collapse of our food chain at big grocery stores. While things have since calmed down and straightened out, many people are now aware of just how weak our food supply chain is. The obvious solution- buy small- scale, buy local. The obvious problem- buying meat the right way, (small scale and local) is expensive. Here where I am in Detroit we’ve got a great meat guy, but a couple of weeks ago I found myself at the Dekalb farmers market in Atlanta. I spent $9 for one pound of organic, grass-fed ground beef. What are your thoughts for people who are concerned about the costs of shopping ethically? On a broader scale, do you have any solutions to this?
Price; it’s one of the biggest and most common questions. So let’s tackle it on several fronts.
1. Whenever someone says they can’t afford our food, I grab them by the arm and say “take me to your house.” Guess what I find there? Take-out, coffee, alcohol, sometimes tobacco, Netflix, People magazine, iPhones, flat-screen TV, tickets to Disney, lottery tickets—you get the drift. Very seldom does “I can’t afford it” carry any weight. We buy what we want, and that includes many folks below the poverty line.
2. Buy unprocessed. That $9 ground beef is still less than a fast food meal of equal nutritional value. Domestic culinary skills are the foundation of integrity food systems, and never have we had more techno-gadgetry to make our kitchens efficient. The average American spends fewer than 15 minutes a day in their kitchen. Nearly 80 percent of Americans have no clue at 4 p.m. what’s for dinner. In fact, the new catchphrase for millennials is “what’s dinner?” not “what’s for dinner?” So cooking from scratch is the number one way to reduce costs. Right now you can buy a whole Polyface pastured broiler, world-class, for less a pound than boneless skinless breast Tyson chicken at Wal-Mart. The most expensive heirloom Peruvian blue potato at New York City green markets is less per pound than Lay’s potato chips across the street. It’s about the processing.
3. Buy bulk. Get a freeze and buy half a beef or 20 chickens at a time. Buy a bushel of green beans and can them. We buy 10 bushels of apples every fall and spend two days making applesauce; it’s cheaper than watery junk at the supermarket and is real food. That’s not a waste of time; it’s kitchen camaraderie. On our farm, we give big price breaks for volume purchasing because it’s simply more efficient to handle a $500 transaction than 25 $20 transactions. This means, of course, that you must have a savings plan. Half of all Americans can’t put their hands on $400 in cash. That’s not an expensive food problem; that’s an endemic and profound failure to plan
Q: Here at OLM we’re a big fan of systems. We also have 10,000 square foot urban farm right in our back yard and are getting chickens very soon. Developing a farm feels a bit like an optimal opportunity to create the “perfect” system. I’m curious as to how the farm is systemized to be self-sustainable. I’m wondering if the farm is carbon neutral or carbon negative? Do you let your chickens work on your compost pile? Do you monitor cow grazing for optimum carbon sequestration? What advice do you have for the many people including us, who have just started growing our food after the current crisis?
Perhaps the starting point is to think of integration rather than segregation. How many different species of things can you hook together for symbiosis? So we follow the cows with the laying hens in Eggmobiles to scratch through the cow dung, spread out the manure as fertilizer, and eat the fly larvae out of the cowpats (this mimics the way birds always follow herbivores in nature). We build compost with pigs (we call them pig aerators). We have chickens underneath rabbit cages, generating $10,000 a year in a space the size of a 2-car garage and making the most superb compost in the world. We see trees as carbon sinks to integrate with open land; industrial commercial chippers enable us to chip crooked, diseased, and dying trees for compost carbon. The kitchen and gardening scraps go to the chickens. Hoop houses for rabbits, pigs, and chickens in the winter double up as vegetable production in the spring, summer, and fall, creating pathogen dead-ends for the plants and animals growing there at different times of the year. Integration is everything.
In half a century, we’ve moved our soil organic matter from 1 percent to 8.2 percent. I don’t know if we’re overall carbon-neutral, but we’ve done this without buying an ounce of chemical fertilizer and using 800 percent less depreciable infrastructure per gross income dollar than the average U.S. farm. That creates resilience. Over the years we’ve installed 8 miles of waterlines from permaculture style high ponds that catch surface run-off and gravity feed to the farmland below. And the rocks and gullies now grow vegetation where none grew before. This is not pride; it’s a humble acknowledgment of a Creator’s benevolent and abundant design; it’s our responsibility to caress this magnificent womb.
Climate Change Causing Less Nutrition, More Sugar In Our food
How Excess Carbon Dioxide Diminishes Nutrients in Plants
Our food system has become a game of Jenga, and we’re running out of blocks to pull from the bottom. Disease and challenging growing conditions threaten popular foods like coffee, chocolate, bananas, and wheat. Bees, nature’s perfect pollinator, are stressed and disappearing rapidly. Plants are also less nutritious, thanks to climate change.
Climate change leads to more carbon dioxide in the environment. Plants enjoy the extra food, growing more quickly, but they are unable to sustain that growth. Too much carbon dioxide affects the amount of macro and micronutrients that in plants. What we eat contain fewer nutrients than ever before due to their “junk food” diet. Do we need to put plants on a low-carb diet?
The Deets
Scientists know that foods are less nutritious than they used to be but previously attributed that discrepancy to modern agriculture’s preference for higher yield crop varieties. Irakli Loladze, a mathematician studying the effect of CO2 on pants for 15 years, finds that climate change has an equal or greater effect on plant health and nutrition content.
Every leaf and every grass blade on earth makes more and more sugars as CO2 levels keep rising…We are witnessing the greatest injection of carbohydrates into the biosphere in human history―[an] injection that dilutes other nutrients in our food supply.”
How diluted are we talking here? A 2017 research paper estimated that by 2050, many of the staple crops we rely on like rice, wheat, barley, and potatoes will lose 7.6%, 7.8%, 14.1%, and 6.4%, of their protein, respectively. This is devastating news for countries that rely on those crops for protein. Eighteen countries could lose more than five percent of their dietary protein, and 148.4 million people will also be at risk.
Plants are also losing many of the essential micronutrients we need. One in three people is deficient in zinc. The concentration of calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, iron, and other minerals in the food we eat has by 8% because of rising carbon dioxide. Scientists and climate deniers alike agree the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is still growing. Will we be able to counter the effects that has on the food we eat?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igLaQ4Gi_0Y
No Easy Solutions, No Quick Fixes
Farming takes time, and results from changes are not always apparent. A new crop takes 15 to 20 years to arrive in stores. Other potential fixes like mass scale composting or reducing carbon dioxide in the air are also time-consuming processes. The well-being of the food we eat and our food system are deteriorating in a world where fewer people have the resources to produce their own food. Are we at the point where we are unable to stay healthy through food alone? Only time will tell…yet it’s the biggest unknown in this entire equation.
Organic Family Farms are Likely to Suffer from Wal-Mart’s Foray into Organic Food Industry
(NaturalNews – Julie Wilson) What happens when large, powerful corporations violate the law and are immune from prosecution or accountability? They usually become repeat offenders, and in this situation, Wal-Mart, the culprit, is no exception.
About seven years ago, the big box store was accused of “cheapening the value of the organic label by sourcing products from industrial-scale factory farms and developing countries, including China,” according to a report by The Cornucopia Institute, a farm policy research group that acts as an organic industry watchdog.
Around that time, Wal-Mart also partnered with Horizon Organic, which is owned by dairy giant Dean Foods, and became the largest retailer of organic milk. Wal-Mart then used Aurora Organic Dairy, located in Aurora, Colorado, to package their own private-label organic milk.
Organic watchdog groups bust Wal-Mart for violating USDA food standards in 2005
In 2005, The Cornucopia Institute blew the whistle on the company’s operations, alleging that it was violating USDA organic rules by confining more than 4,000 dairy cows to their cages, instead of letting them graze freely, as required by federal organic standards.
Understanding that organic consumers are label checkers who genuinely care about the quality of food, and how animals are treated, Wal-Mart deceptively marketed their products to depict happy cows, grazing on lush green pastures, with some campaigns even using graphics of small family farms.
The truth is that the dairy cows used to produce Wal-Mart’s “organic” milk were living short, stressful lives in filthy industrial facilities, exactly the type of environments which organic consumers seek to avoid.
The watchdog’s investigation found that Aurora Organic Dairy “willfully” violated 14 tenets of USDA organic standards and was caught labeling “natural” food as organic.
Despite the findings, Wal-Mart was not prosecuted but agreed to remove fraudulent signage and was allowed to continue operating without being fine a cent.
Now, the big box giant is back at it, preparing to introduce a new line of organic products that the company promises will “drive down organic food prices,” marketing them as 25 percent cheaper than the organic food currently on shelves.
This time, Wal-Mart isn’t revealing the source for their organic products and is instead using a private-label supplier and marketing products under the Wild Oats brand, a former natural foods grocery chain temporarily owned by Whole Foods in 2009 before an antitrust rule forced the company to divest its holdings.
Whole Foods then sold Wild Oats’ licensee rights to Luberski Inc., another food distributor, in 2010. Wild Oats’ physical locations were “parceled out” to buyers like Trader Joe’s and Kroger, Gelsons, according to an LA Times report.
However, Wild Oats made a comeback due to a generous donation from American venture capitalist Ronald Burkle, co-founder and managing partner of The Yucaipa Companies, LLC, a firm specializing in helping underperforming businesses.
Burkle reportedly intends to revamp the company by offering catering and take-out food services, home delivery and phone-in orders.
When Wild Oats CEO Tom Casey was asked how their partnership with Wal-Mart intended to deliver organic products, including pasta and cookies, more cheaply, his reply was, “Bigger can be better,” as paraphrased by NPR.
Considering Wal-Mart’s past with organic food, some experts aren’t convinced.
Michael Pollan, author of The Food Movement, Rising, said in an interview with the St. Paul Pioneer Press that he’s concerned that the expansion of “Big Organic” will lower food quality, weaken standards and hurt small family farms.
Organic food costs more, because it’s more expensive to produce, “and paying farmers a fair price has always been part of the deal,” said the Cornucopia Institute.
Will Wal-Mart tweak its business model in a way that allows them to offer organic foods without premium prices, while still adhering to organic federal standards?
Perhaps, but past behavior is usually a good indicator of future behavior, and Wal-Mart’s track record does little to assure skeptics.
Small Family Farmer Fights Back Against Over-reaching Government Forcing her off her Land
(NaturalNews – Julie Wilson) Martha Boneta, operator of a small family farm in Paris, Virginia, achieved success not only for her business but also for small farmers and property owners across the state when the “Boneta Bill” finally became law on July 2.
Despite efforts from local and state government officials, including Fauquier Zoning Administrator Kimberley Johnson, who accused Boneta of violating zoning ordinances, HB-268 passed, which protects traditional farming and agricultural practices against over-regulation on the county level.
Liberty Farm is a small, working 64-acre farm located about an hour outside of Washington D.C. that offers fresh seasonal organic vegetables, fresh and dried herbs, honey and honeybee products, eggs, chicken, duck, turkey, emu, hand-made soaps and sheep wool crafts.
The controversy began in 2012 after a neighbor reported Boneta’s farm and its on-farm store as a “nuisance” following a birthday party that she held for eight 10-year old girls, which led to Fauquier County putting her out of business.
Johnson, the county zoning board administrator, accused Boneta of selling fresh fruit, vegetables, beverages and homemade handicrafts out of her on-site farm store, an action he says violated “modified zoning rules.”
The Star Exponentreports that, under the state’s Right to Farm law, agricultural operations are supposed to be protected against “nuisance law suits, and prevent local governments from using zoning laws to restrict standard farming practices, even if these practices bother adjacent property owners.”
According to Boneta, her zoning administrator went on her Facebook page and saw a birthday party picture of little girls on her farm, and an advertisement that she posted for pumpkin carving in her pumpkin patch. Boneta says she was found in violation of engaging in traditional activities that farmers have engaged in “since forever.”
The consequences for Liberty Farm’s alleged violation carried a penalty of $15,000 per day in fines “based on amendments made to the county’s zoning ordinance,” reportedThe American Spectator.
Despite maintaining that her retail farm business license was “grandfathered” into any changes made by the county, Boneta was also forced to stop selling vegetables that she had harvested. To prevent the food from being wasted, she donated it to local charities.
Boneta’s story gained national media attention, prompting farmers to stage peaceful “pitchfork protests” outside of the Board of Zoning Appeals building in support of her farm and state property rights.
In the 2013 session of the General Assembly, Rep. Scott Lingamfelter helped bring justice to Boneta and protect other farmers from similar abuse by spearheading legislation that would strengthen Virginia’s Right to Farm Act.
The “Boneta Bill” passed the House by an “overwhelming margin,” but was killed in a Senate committee. However, grassroots organizations and Boneta’s supporters didn’t give up, but instead returned to the General Assembly in 2014 and “won wide bipartisan approval for legislation protecting the rights of family farmers.”
Backed by the Virginia Farm Bureau and signed into law by Gov. Terry McAuliffe, customary activities at agricultural operations are now protected from local governments unless substantial impacts on public welfare can be proven.
The bill also prohibits localities from requiring special-use permits for farmers wanting to host farm-related activities.
“I am grateful to all the Virginians and legislators from across the Commonwealth who rallied for non-partisan legislation that provides economic opportunity for small family farmers, access to consumers and allows the great traditions of farming in Virginia to flourish,” said Boneta.
“It is gratifying to see the hard work of Virginians, working together across party lines, rewarded by a law that enables family farms to prosper as our Founding Fathers intended.”