State lawmakers are once again poised to pass legislation giving farmers a measure of protection from such ordinances, and this time, the legislation - House Bill 1646, the "Plan for the Protection of Agriculture, Communities, and the Rural Environment," known as ACRE - has Gov. Ed Rendell's support.
Last year, legislators passed H.B. 1222, which would have given farmers affordable and timely legal recourse against municipalities that pass ordinances prohibiting certain farming practices. The governor vetoed the bill because, while he supports the right of farmers to challenge unfair ordinances, he wanted the legislation to address the concerns of local governments about proper manure management and excessive nutrient runoff from farms, Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo said.
ACRE, which was introduced Monday and already has 63 co-sponsors, including Lancaster County Reps. Dave Hickernell, Gib C. Armstrong, Tom Creighton and Scott Boyd, was developed in conjunction with the state Department of Agriculture and addresses those concerns, Ardo said.
"(Rendell) said in his veto message of 1222 that he fully supported the goals of the original legislation, but he felt it failed to address the nutrient-management issues, and more than anything, that's what motivated his veto," Ardo said. "The governor feels that (ACRE) is more comprehensive and more progressive than 1222. It covers areas that were previously left to chance."
Hickernell, an Elizabethtown Republican who sits on the House agriculture committee, and state Sen. Noah Wenger, a Stevens Republican and vice chair of the Senate agriculture committee, say they would have preferred Rendell to have signed H.B. 1222.
Hickernell and Wenger say ordinances restricting farming aren't yet a problem in Lancaster County, but they are a problem in other parts of the state that once were very rural and are now becoming increasingly populated, as Lancaster County is.
When the growing desire for homes in a country setting began pushing housing developments up against agriculture operations, residents started to complain about the smells and noise associated with farming, prompting municipal officials to pass restrictive ordinances, the lawmakers say.
Many of the ordinances that gave rise to ACRE impact small family farms that don't generate enough money to comply with new regulations.
Secretary of Agriculture Dennis Wolff said there are documented cases of such ordinances preventing farmers from expanding their operations in order to bring children into the business.
Hickernel said he believes ACRE could prevent those scenarios.
"We've got to make sure we protect the ability of the farmer to do what he does best, which is to provide food for those of us who don't farm; and to allow him to expand, obviously within reason, so he can stay on the farm," Hickernell said. "I've often heard people say that the best way to preserve farmland is to preserve the farmer, and that's what this is all about."
The only recourse farmers now have in dealing with oppressive ordinances, Wenger and Hickernell said, is to challenge them in court, which is a long and expensive process. Seeing such lawsuits through to their conclusion could put farmers out of business and endanger farmland, they said.
ACRE would create an Office of Ordinance Review within the State Conservation Commission and a separate five-member Agricultural Review Board with the power to hear challenges to municipal ordinances.
The process would work as follows:
A farmer would file an ordinance dispute with the Office of Ordinance Review.
The office would examine the ordinance and could strike down the law if it determines the municipality has exceeded its authority.
A municipality or farmer could appeal the office's decision to the Agricultural Review Board.
Appeals of board decisions would go to Commonwealth Court, and the attorney general would enforce the court's final decision.
The Agricultural Review Board would consist of the secretaries of agriculture, environmental protection and community and economic development, plus two members appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, one of whom would have to be a dean or faculty member of a college of agriculture at a state-related university.
Environmental groups including Penn Future and Penn Environment oppose ACRE for the same reasons they opposed H.B. 1222. They say it prevents municipalities from banning "factory farms."
Penn Future, which supported Rendell's directive to the Agriculture Department to review the problems with H.B. 1222 and recommend a compromise, blasted ACRE as soon as it was unveiled, saying it gives large agribusinesses with deep pockets a backdoor veto over ordinances and zoning restrictions they don't like.
David Masur of Penn Environment echoed Penn Future's concerns. Also, Masur said, if family farms like those in Lancaster County are to survive, they must be protected from factory farms. The Agricultural Review Board, which likely would be dominated by those favoring large corporate "mega-farms," won't be inclined to consider family farms in their decisions, Masur said.
"It will put Big Brother and more bureaucracy on the backs of local communities that want to have a say on what kind of agriculture they want to promote in their communities, such as family farms versus agribusiness," Masur said.
But Hickernell says the issue has been well-vetted and researched and the charge that this is a move to protect and bolster huge agribusinesses is false.
Actually, he said, ACRE enhances the state laws controlling nutrients and manure use on farms and includes 24 new regulations for commercial animal-feeding operations.
As a result, ACRE has bipartisan support, and the chances are good that the bill will be voted out of the agriculture committee during its June 14 meeting, Hickernell said.
Whether it will be approved by the full House and moved to the Senate, however, is not as certain.
"I wouldn't want to speculate beyond the committee vote, but right now it looks pretty positive," Hickernell said.