Right to farm being stripped from Americans: Michigan to criminalize small family farms with chickens, goats, honey bees and more
May 02, 2014
http://www.naturalnews.com/044965_family_farms_food_security_Michigan_government.html
(NaturalNews) In the latest stunning assault on Americans'
right to grow their own food, the freedom-crushing state of Michigan has ruled
that local governments (cities, towns, counties) can now ban any animal they
wish from small residential farms. The move opens the door to the mass
criminalization of backyard farms and small, residential farming operations
where people might keep a few goats or honey bees for food security.
According to Michigan Public Radio (1), the ruling could ban all chickens,
goats, honey bees and other animals from farms which have another residential
house less than 250 feet away.
Off The Grid News(2) goes on to report:
Some homesteaders in Michigan could find themselves in a complete regulatory
limbo because of the Commission's action. Blogger, writer and organic farmer
Michelle Regalado Deatrick does not know if she'll be able to keep her
livestock, because about half of her 80-acre farm may not be zoned for farm
animals.
"We're building up a mixed production farm, planning to farm during retirement,
and we have a permit in hand for a livestock facility," Deatrick said, "...Now
we're having to reconsider our business plans and may sell the farm and buy a
farm in a more rural area with definite [Right To Farm] protection, or move to
another state that's more welcoming and protective of small farm rights."
Michigan DNR previously ordered small local farmer to shoot his own pigs
Michigan is the same state where the DNR (Department of
Natural Resources) ordered
one small, local farmer to shoot all his pigs because they were the wrong
"race" of pigs. This genocidal demand by the Michigan state government echoes a
tyrannical anti-farming agenda at the highest levels of state government.
Michigan is also the state where Julie Bass of Oak Park was threatened
with jail time for teaching her children how to grow vegetables in their own
home garden. All charges against Julie were later dropped after Natural News and
other independent news sources publicly
shamed Oak Park bureaucrats into backing down.
Nationwide, people who attempt to grow their own food are routinely threatened
with arrest and fines. One woman in Oklahoma suffered the
complete destruction of her medicinal herb landscaping by local city
officials who raided her home garden while she was away.
The war against small farms is an attack against America
This obscene war against small farms is an attack against
America herself. Our heritage, values, and culture are forever interwtined with
small local farms.
Attacks against small local farms are also attacks on America's food security.
Local, independent food production provides a buffer against systemic food
failures that might occur, for example, after an EMP attack causes a national
power grid blackout. Without power, centralized systems of food production,
harvesting, transportation and retailing cannot function. But small, local farms
can still produce food without electricity. So any attack against local farming
is, in essense, an attack on America's national security.
And no state seems to be more determined to undermine America's national food
security than Michigan, where state leaders appear to be even more insane than
the leaders of Illinois.
Natural News urges farmers everywhere to fight back against this insanity and
stand up for your divine right to produce your own food on your own property.
Any government "authority" that attempts to take this right away from you is no
authority at all: it is a tyranny.
With food prices already skyrocketing nationwide, and food security on the brink
of systemic failures, only a government run by absolute fools would try to limit
local food production. Perhaps when these bureaucrats are all starving one day,
they can eat their regulations.
Sources for this article include:
(1) http://michiganradio.org/post/state-agricult...
(2) http://www.offthegridnews.com/2014/05/02/mic...