New Virginia Law Protects Farmers From Meddling Local Officials

Well-funded Greens, bureaucrats sought to kill this landmark legislation

 In a hard-fought and stunning victory for family farmers and property rights throughout the Commonwealth, Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) ON March 5 signed into law legislation solidifying Virginia’s status as a right-to-farm state by limiting local officials’ ability to interfere with normal agricultural operations.

The governor’s signature marks the latest chapter in a swirling controversy that attracted nationwide attention in 2012 when the Fauquier County Board of Supervisors forced family farmer Martha Boneta to cease selling produce from her own 64-acre farm. No longer allowed to sell the vegetables she had harvested, Boneta donated the food to local charities lest it go to waste.

Fauquier County officials threatened Boneta with $5,000 per-day fines for hosting a birthday party for eight 10-year-old girls without a permit, and advertising pumpkin carvings. Seeing in the county’s action against Boneta as a brazen effort to drive her off her land, Virginians from all walks of life rallied to her defense.  Supporters gathered in Warrenton, the county seat, for a peaceful “pitchfork protest” to vent their anger over what an out-of-control local government had done to a law-abiding citizen.

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6,300 Reasons The Government Is Dead Wrong On Farm Subsidies

Congress has been wrangling for months over how to trim the taxpayer burden of bountiful subsidies to farmers. Here’s a thought: Stop paying the dead ones.

Between 2008 and 2012, we now know, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) disbursed more than $36 million to some 6,300 farmers who had bought the farm (so to speak). The improper payments were revealed in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Taxpayers may take some solace from the fact that the number of expired payments has declined. For example, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA), which oversees income subsidies and disaster payments, had paid a whopping $1.1 billion to 172,801 deceased farmers between 1999 and 2005.

At the suggestion of the GAO, the agency in 2007 began computer-matching the names of subsidy recipients against the Social Security Administration’s “death master file.” (About time.) Consequently, the agency has recouped about $1 million out of a total of $3.3 million in improper FSA payments for fiscal years 2011 and 2012. The rest apparently remains with bereaved relatives or business partners of the intended recipients.


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