US farmer fined $5K for growing too many vegetables

i'm in favor of giving people tax breaks if they have a fruit tree in their front yard, or grow something for the community to eat.

not fining them peoples monies for doing it.

I live in a medium sized town, 45,000, which is also a regional hub for about 150,000 more people. They like to be pretty strict about ordinances and zoning, but only in certain circumstances. Sometimes its a good thing and most times its just piss poor planning on the officials' part. Most new construction is pretty much junk and way overpriced. Many developers get a golden ticket only because they play hardball and officials want to stay employed and not lose revenue, so the bigger guys who pump out shoddy craftsmanship are never bothered while the smaller guys are not allowed to get big.

I can drive through these subdivisions and look at houses that are a mere 15 feet apart, wall to wall on each side, with maybe a 40 foot deep back yard, if they pay out the nose for their lot. Add to that, no trees and no sidewalks and one central mailbox that might be over a block away. All of that for 200K? Its basically a glorified trailer park. They are built to have limited access in and out. Thats an example of city planners' genius, at making money that is.

Zoning is a great idea when it comes to not putting coal plants or strip clubs or shooting ranges right next door to schools, but it fails miserably on the residential end. Now if this guy were a hog farmer, I could see the outrage. Two acres is a good chunk of land and growing an assortment of plants can be very good for the soil if done properly. It definitely doesn't sound like he's got a mass production farm operation going on, just a big ol garden.

Would there be a difference if the man were growing flowers exclusively and it looked really pretty? All nicely landscaped with neat trails and such with free tours? Probably not, but it still matters if the guy maybe pissed off the wrong person. Its all about the money, sadly.

When the tables are turned and you complain to your city about things that are messed up, you get the runaround usually. Citizens who pay their property taxes can't backcharge the city for their screwups without a big fight, yet bureaucrats can come up with pretty much anything to tag you with if you don't play ball with them. Its absurd.

Whats next? The more people who endorse this kind of behavior out of their officials, the more that they will attempt to clamp down on everybody. It might lead to even more draconian rules that only hurts everybody. Its the whole "one guy ruins it for everyone else" theory.

Thank goodness the government has us under that much control that we won't have people growing to many vegetables on his property.

Who knows what that nutcase may have been planning to do with them....

Wait, that was explosives that I was thinking of.

What is it that the government is thinking of????

This is utter idiocy . If zoning laws prevent a man for doing as much as possible with the land he owns, then those laws are unjust and need re thinking. If he was growing produce outside the bounds of his property then I could understand it, but there just seems no reason for charging this man five K just because he is clever and industrious!
Its an assasination of the kind of hard work and gumption which is the foundation of any community, right from the town to the nation. Lunacy in the extreme!

There have always been land zoning laws as long as I can remember. They may be unfair at times, but they can also prevent a 24 hour machine shop from opening right next to your home.

Screw Monsanto. They (and other mega agra corporations) are destroying our food base, and taking absolute control of the world's food supply.

Originally posted by slinger
reply to post by coder

 

What it has happened? John Kerry's wife must have heard this guy was Taking a bite out of her hunts income! How dare he

Whoah! watch it there...I assume that you meant Heinz and not Hunts. When talking about Ketchup, it's Heinz....you 're probably one of those "Catsup" people with you Hunts.

reply to post by ironfalcon


That is the most retarded thing i have heard of .Seriously ticket a man for growing to much food?? What is their problem ??Is he making more than he is spending on the food in the state and so they are ticketing him to make up the difference? WoW i seriously hope he fights those idiots and takes them for all they are worth.

With current zoning laws he will lose, even with very deep pockets, he will probably lose. Common sense is rarely found in a bureaucracy. A little common sense would go a long ways in cases like this. Its not a 24 hour machine shop, a pig farm, or a coal plant, its a glorified garden. Let him have his hobby, and supplement his income.

Originally posted by muzzleflash
This proves the government is out to undermine the people at every turn. PROOF.

Here we have people STARVING and homeless, and they are trying to keep farmers from growing "too much food".

Where are those "overpopulation proponents" now???

How is the world overpopulated if the government has to go STOP people from growing "too much" food?

Great post,couldnt of put it any better.

Things like this make me wish I could have just 50 seconds of Primetime TV to let this kind of thing be known.

IM SHOCKED

Originally posted by abecedarian
Any read the article? He's fined for violating local ordanances, not any federal law or regulation.

From what I've seen on ATS, local governments are the good kind.

Apparently people either neglect to read the article before they form an opinion or they just like to freak out over anything they possibly can.

reply to post by mothershipzeta

From what I've seen on ATS, local governments are the good kind.

Yes! Star on that!

Look around, most of what you see that is government-provided is from your local government. Trash collection, local roads, street cleaning, schools, the list goes on and on.

The best part about local government is THE VOTERS HAVE IMMMEDIATE CONTROL OF THEIR POLITICIANS.

The article failed to mention what the zoning laws were. It looks like there was a law and he broke it. Laws are made by the people that live there, not some Orwellian figure. Just because you think you can do something in your yard does not make it legal.

Originally posted by earthdude
Just because you think you can do something in your yard does not make it legal.

And that sentence didn't feel oddly steeped in injustice while you typed it?

There are laws to protect the people that without them we'd have chaos... but they are for the most part few, since you only need a few.

The rest is toilet paper worthy rubbish designed by and for people with vested interests, from the personal like keeping their local neighborhood consistent so it wont clash with their 3000$ curtains or houses exterior, or they dont have to look out their back window and see some guys veggie patch beyond their pool house, all the way up to making sure they retain a business monopoly, or lobby interest for someone above them.

Some laws where made to be broken... simply to show how stupid they where to be allowed to be enacted in the first place.

Edit:- Now if he had a 20 foot tall grain silo blocking his neighbors view that was also structurally unsound then id say yeah he's being inconsiderate and breaking a law, cant have people building stuff that impacts heavily on surrounding neighbors, but this doesnt sound like that at in the slightest... wouldn't mind knowing what the law was myself.

obviously the powers that be are working on killing the entire population to the point where we cant be self dependent anymore.

what more proof do we have??? people need to stop watching vma's, oprah, dr phil, & get their heads outta their asses already. this is just sickening....

at least before we have another inside job attack on our own soil.

WAKE UP YOU ARROGANT IGNORANT FOOLS!

reply to post by tooo many pills


Oh yeah Monsanto has a huge vested interest in the FDA and the EPA. If one of their weed be gone brand of seeds cross pollinates with your own seed/plants your future seed becomes the property of Monsanto and they do enforce these claims in court every day.

I heard about a guy who had used the same seed for 50 years, when Monsanto tested his seed (without permission) it was confirmed to contain markers from Monsanto weed killer resistant seed. This man’s seed which had come from his grandfather was contaminated and the cause was determined to be possible grain spillage from a passing truck. A Canadian Judge ruled in favor of Monsanto and the man was forced to destroy his seed and fined etc.

Many more cases have been won by Monsanto here in the USA.

The government has been paying people to "not farm" for decades. My former in-laws were paid to not grow corn on their farm back in the late 70's, early 80's. I'm sure if they took the money and grew corn anyway, they would have been fined as well. Yes, this is a screwed up system we live in.

Corn, coffee, sugar and other items are "commodities" on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. This is the governments way of controlling the price. Too many vegetables makes the price go down. Which leads to lower prices and lower profits for the large corporations. And we all know this administration and any other administration is beholden to the corporate powers. It's all very disgusting.

reply to post by abecedarian
No disrepect intended but are you kidding? BP dumped millions of gallons of Corexit after being told to stop by our EPA. If BP, or any other powerful enitity, wants to build a refinery next door to you the only question will be how long will it take you to get out? If you're lucky that question will be asked. None of us own anything here. I hold the deed to my house, as permitted by the bank carrying the note. So, basically I've got a pc. of paper & a monthly financial obligation. The roof over my head can be taken away any time. If I'm really lucky I'll get $$ to vacate. Executive privilege, which has creeped in and now covers most anything, can also shut down, or confiscate most any thing.

Americans like to believe we are free. That includes me. But truth is, we are far free & grow less so every day.

reply to post by ironfalcon


This guy lives less than a mile down the road from me. I thought it was interesting to see that the story made it here to ATS. About 5 miles from our house, there's a Georgia Power Company building which offers the use of its parking deck for local farmers to sell their produce. They bring all their produce and set up tables in the parking lot on the weekends. I am sure this guy sells his produce there. I'll have to drive over to his house and see what he's got growing. I hope this guy fights the Clarkston system. They're just hurting for tax dollars as they are thinking of 'growing' the 'old' city into something more on par with local developments in Atlanta.

Good for him

Everyone should grow as much food as they can. EVERYONE!

If the globalist bogeymen really are trying to poison and sterilize us with GMO crops and crashing our economy to cause hyperinflation so nobody can afford to buy food at a grocery store...

then the most obvious and effective move we can make to resist this tyranny is to just grow grow grow as much food as we can, feed yourselves, feed your families, feed your communities. We can beat this plot.

Keep in mind, as our economy is destroyed, the value of your homegrown food supply will increase quickly. When you can't buy a loaf of bread with a wheel barrow full of dollars, a home grown tomatoe will be worth it's weight in gold.

Originally posted by Hefficide

I just watched this story on the local news a few minutes ago and calling this guy a farmer seems to be a bit of a stretch. From what I could see he is doing this in a subdivision.

I'm all for his freedoms but I can also imagine how I'd feel about my property values if my next door neighbor converted his yard into a farm.

I'm on the City Council in my small town and I can see exactly how this can happen and I agree that it has to be zoned appropriately. It's one thing to have a small personal garden it's another to have a small agricultural business in a sub-division. 2 acres is a huge garden!