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North Dakota farm groups weigh-in on corporate vote

The president of the North Dakota Farmers Union is pleased voters have decided to restore a 1932 law in the state that bans corporate farms.

Mark Watne tells Brownfield Ag News allowing corporations to run farms will not help the struggling hog and dairy industries in his state, as the state’s Farm Bureau argues. Watne says family farms need better price opportunities such as improved farm programs and value-added systems that farmers themselves own, “We need to put more money into research at our land grant universities to find avenues to find greater income sources and so forth. That’s how you drive it. You make it profitable and people will do both dairy and hogs in North Dakota.”

The North Dakota Farm Bureau opposes the state’s corporate farming ban, but did not take a position on this week’s referendum.  Farm Bureau president Daryl Lies tells Brownfield they are seeking to overturn the ban in federal court, “I think it’s a question answered once and for all. You know, it seems to be thought about every five to 10 years either in the legislature or it ends up going to the ballot box like this and a lot of emotion and misinformation gets shared. So we’re just, we’re going beyond that. The only appropriate place to get this question answered, whether it is discriminatory and unconstitutional like we think.”

The North Dakota legislature passed a law last year that would exempt dairy and hog production from the corporate ban. That’s what the measure that voters passed on Tuesday overturns.