“Right to farm” doesn’t mean farming right. Far from it

Over the past two decades, the Missouri Constitution has become a whiteboard, easily altered with the prevailing political winds.

Some amendments are understandable: Thanks to the 11th Amendment, no one can be jailed for being in debt. Other amendments have been lost to time, like allowing women to be dismissed from jury duty by simple request.

In 2004, that year’s bizarre political zeitgeist led to the one-sentence 33rd Amendment, codifying that the Show-Me State only recognized marriages only between a man and a woman. Then, in 2008, the last time that voters amended the state’s most important piece of parchment, English was declared the state’s official language, a decision ensuring that any public governmental meeting would be conducted in that language.

Supporters of the latest attempt to add ink to the state constitution want to codify what Missourians have always done: farm and raise livestock. Voters August 5 will decide Amendment 1, or what those supporters have dubbed the “right to farm” amendment.

“Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure that the right of Missouri citizens to engage in agricultural production and ranching practices shall not be infringed?” the ballot language asks.

It continues: “A ‘yes’ vote will amend the Missouri Constitution to guarantee the rights of Missourians to engage in farming and ranching practices, subject to any power given to local government under Article VI of the Missouri Constitution. A ‘no’ vote will not amend the Missouri Constitution regarding farming and ranching. If passed, this measure will have no impact on taxes.”

If adopted, the proposed amendment would be only the second of its kind in the nation. North Dakota approved a similar amendment in 2012. In that agriculture-dependent state, farmers were split on adding it to the constitution. The North Dakota Farmers Union, one of the state’s two biggest farming organizations, opposed the amendment.

In Missouri, the main backer of Amendment 1 is Missouri Farmers Care, a consortium of more than 40 ag groups that includes the Missouri Farm Bureau, the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association, the Missouri Dairy Association, as well as corporate giants such as Cargill and Monsanto.

Missouri Farmers Care has received several large donations over the final quarter including $40,500 from the Missouri Corn Growers Association; $75, 000 from Missouri Pork PAC; and $25,000 from the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives.

On the other side of Amendment 1, the Humane Society of the United States has given $375,000 to Missouri’s Food for America, the main group opposing the measure in the state.

The “right to farm” amendment raises questions for Missouri voters: What makes farming, as a profession, special? And what’s to stop plumbers, bakers, tech-support specialists at Cerner, greeting-card writers at Hallmark, and convenience-store clerks from demanding that their livelihoods be cemented in the Missouri Constitution?

Missouri Farmers Care executive director Dan Kleinsorge says farming in Missouri is just different and deserves unique protection, even if the threats to it aren’t readily apparent.

“That’s a question that comes up a lot,” he says. “These other professions aren’t under systematic opposition. You know, no one is really coming after them. Those also aren’t professionals that feed folks.”

The Missouri Farmers Care website says it’s pushing the amendment to protect “Missouri’s family farms from out-of-state animal-rights groups that have targeted Missouri agriculture in the past.”

“Agriculture is kind of coming under pressure from some of these out-of-state groups, specifically HSUS [Humane Society of the United States],” Kleinsorge says.

Kleinsorge and Missouri Farmers Care cite Proposition B, approved by voters in 2011 to create new restrictions for dog breeders. Despite voters’ passing the proposition, the Missouri Legislature later passed its own watered-down version of Prop B, which Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon signed into law.

Kleinsorge, who grew up on a small Missouri farm, says Prop B was more complex than being about “puppy-mill cruelty.” He says that law’s limits on the numbers of domestic animals that a business could raise would potentially have led to an unending stream of legal battles for horse raisers and pig and cattle farmers. He says Amendment 1’s passage would ensure that farmers and livestock operations are safe from such murky legal battles.

Ami Freeberg, communications and community outreach coordinator for local urban-farming group Cultivate Kansas City, says Amendment 1 is unnecessary and offers no tangible benefits to farmers.

“They already have the right to farm,” she says. “There’s no other industry in the United States that has constitutional protection. It’s just not necessary unless you’re a big factory farm that wants to pollute the environment, that wants to keep animals confined in small spaces, that wants to not label genetically modified organisms. Those are the farms that are seeking this constitutional protection.”

She continues: “They don’t want regulations that are generally good for the environment, for the good of communities, for the knowledge of consumers. They don’t want those restrictions put on what they’re doing.”

Freeberg says the amendment’s branding (“Keep Missouri farming”) is misleading. So are the claims of protection for farmers from “out of state” animal-rights groups.

“The first time I read it, I said, ‘Yeah, that sounds like a pretty good thing.'” But Freeberg says she saw through the proposed amendment’s intent. She says Amendment 1’s language is so vague that, if it is passed, agriculture lobbies could battle any farming or livestock regulation that government entities propose by claiming that they have a right to farm in any way they deem fit.

“We are heavily promoting voting ‘No’ on 1,” she says of Cultivate KC’s position. “We are very much opposed to it.”