{"id":23815,"date":"2015-05-07T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T11:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=23815"},"modified":"2015-05-07T15:41:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T20:41:58","slug":"what-oklahoma-farmers-think-about-the-right-to-farm-issue-in-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/05\/07\/what-oklahoma-farmers-think-about-the-right-to-farm-issue-in-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"What Oklahoma Farmers Think About The Right-to-Farm Issue In Oklahoma"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_23828\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-23828\" alt=\"Dustin Green, owner of 10 Acre Woods farm near Norman, feeds a few of his 400 or so chickens. \" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/PHOTO-05-07-FarmersOnRTF-e1430949251295.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/PHOTO-05-07-FarmersOnRTF-e1430949251295.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/PHOTO-05-07-FarmersOnRTF-e1430949251295-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/PHOTO-05-07-FarmersOnRTF-e1430949251295-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/PHOTO-05-07-FarmersOnRTF-e1430949251295-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dustin Green, owner of 10 Acre Woods farm near Norman, feeds a few of his 400 or so chickens.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>The right-to-farm bill <a title=\"Okleglink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=HJR1012\" target=\"_blank\">survived Oklahoma&#8217;s legislative process<\/a> last week. That means voters will have a chance to decide next year whether to give farmers and ranchers broad protections against future state laws that might interfere with their operations.<\/p><p>But opponents say right-to-farm is a license that allows big ag to harm animals and the environment. But where do actual Oklahoma farmers and ranchers stand on the issue?<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/204252075&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p><p><!--more-->StateImpact randomly knocked on current and former farmers\u2019 and ranchers\u2019 doors east of Norman to find out.<\/p><p>\u201cI don\u2019t have an opinion. I don\u2019t know anything about it. Do you know anything about it?\u201d Debbie Downey asked her son, Dustin. \u201cI know absolutely nothing about it,\u201d Dustin replied.<\/p><p>The people we met with unannounced didn\u2019t know much about right-to-farm. At the Norman Farmers Market there was more awareness of the issue, but few strong opinions about it.<\/p><p>\u201cI\u2019ve heard a little of the opposition, but I haven\u2019t actually read the bill myself,\u201d says Justin Reed, owner of JR Farms and one of the market\u2019s vendors. \u00a0\u201cAnd so, a lot of times I notice with these bills it will say one thing, but mean something else.\u201d<\/p><p><a title=\"StateImpactLink\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/02\/26\/oklahoma-right-to-farm-push-about-more-than-agricultural-practices\/\" target=\"_blank\">StateImpact has reported<\/a> about how right-to-farm is really a fight between the Humane Society of the United States, which pushes for stronger animal welfare laws, and Farm Bureaus, which push against those kinds of laws. Some small farmers passionately oppose it, like Dustin Green, who owns a 10-acre farm near Norman with about 400 chickens.<\/p><p>\u201cSee, this is the difference between big ag and real farmers,\u201d Green says. \u201cFarming in the &#8217;50s was farmers who went and they sold their stuff at the co-op, their grains, their animals. But now everything\u2019s mass-produced. And when you start mass-producing, you lose accountability.<\/p><p>Green says he has no affiliation with the Human Society at all, but said it&#8217;s important to have organizations that hold farmers accountable for animal welfare and ethical farming practices.<\/p><p>&#8220;They shouldn\u2019t be locked in cages. They shouldn\u2019t be locked in barns,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_23837\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-23837\" alt=\"Coleen Thornton with &quot;Arnie&quot; on her farm near Tahlequah, Oklahoma. \" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/20150507-FarmPic001-e1431029698985.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/20150507-FarmPic001-e1431029698985.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/20150507-FarmPic001-e1431029698985-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/20150507-FarmPic001-e1431029698985-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/05\/20150507-FarmPic001-e1431029698985-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Coleen Thornton with &quot;Arnie&quot; on her farm near Tahlequah, Oklahoma.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>Sheep, ducks, llamas, hogs and cattle all mingle on Coleen Thornton\u2019s 60-acre farm down a maze of gravel roads near Tahlequah. Thornton sees both sides of right-to-farm.<\/p><p>\u201cPersonally, I\u2019m not sure we need an amendment to our constitution, but I do understand the question of: Do we want someone from out of state telling us how we do business?\u201d Thornton says.<\/p><p>Travis Schnaithman, whose family\u2019s owns a 5,000-acre farm near Garber adamantly endorses right-to-farm, and points to a Humane Society-backed law in California.<\/p><p>\u201cBasically, they put rules and regulations on how animals are housed. They\u2019ve got to be in enriched crates, enriched pens,\u201d Schnaithman says. \u201cWhat it\u2019s done is decrease that production. Those farmers out there can\u2019t compete on a national scale with other states that don\u2019t have those rules and regulations.\u201d<\/p><p>There seems to be a trend in the sampling of farmers StateImpact interviewed: The bigger the farm, the more likely the farmer is to be a right-to-farm supporter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>StateImpact randomly knocked on farmers\u2019 and ranchers\u2019 doors east of Norman to find out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":23828,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[630,313,637],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23815"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23815"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23815\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23835,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23815\/revisions\/23835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}