Michigan Outlaws Animals of Small Farms

(NaturalNews) In the latest stunning assault on Americans' right to grow their own food, the freedom-crushing state of Michigan has ruled that local governments (cities, towns, counties) can now ban any animal they wish from small residential farms. The move opens the door to the mass criminalization of backyard farms and small, residential farming operations where people might keep a few goats or honey bees for food security.

According to Michigan Public Radio (1), the ruling could ban all chickens, goats, honey bees and other animals from farms which have another residential house less than 250 feet away.

Off The Grid News(2) goes on to report:

Some homesteaders in Michigan could find themselves in a complete regulatory limbo because of the Commission's action. Blogger, writer and organic farmer Michelle Regalado Deatrick does not know if she'll be able to keep her livestock, because about half of her 80-acre farm may not be zoned for farm animals.

"We're building up a mixed production farm, planning to farm during retirement, and we have a permit in hand for a livestock facility," Deatrick said, "...Now we're having to reconsider our business plans and may sell the farm and buy a farm in a more rural area with definite [Right To Farm] protection, or move to another state that's more welcoming and protective of small farm rights."

Michigan DNR previously ordered small local farmer to shoot his own pigs

Michigan is the same state where the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) ordered one small, local farmer to shoot all his pigs because they were the wrong "race" of pigs. This genocidal demand by the Michigan state government echoes a tyrannical anti-farming agenda at the highest levels of state government.

Michigan is also the state where Julie Bass of Oak Park was threatened with jail time for teaching her children how to grow vegetables in their own home garden. All charges against Julie were later dropped after Natural News and other independent news sources publicly shamed Oak Park bureaucrats into backing down.

Nationwide, people who attempt to grow their own food are routinely threatened with arrest and fines. One woman in Oklahoma suffered the complete destruction of her medicinal herb landscaping by local city officials who raided her home garden while she was away.

The war against small farms is an attack against America

This obscene war against small farms is an attack against America herself. Our heritage, values, and culture are forever interwtined with small local farms.

Attacks against small local farms are also attacks on America's food security. Local, independent food production provides a buffer against systemic food failures that might occur, for example, after an EMP attack causes a national power grid blackout. Without power, centralized systems of food production, harvesting, transportation and retailing cannot function. But small, local farms can still produce food without electricity. So any attack against local farming is, in essense, an attack on America's national security.

And no state seems to be more determined to undermine America's national food security than Michigan, where state leaders appear to be even more insane than the leaders of Illinois.

Natural News urges farmers everywhere to fight back against this insanity and stand up for your divine right to produce your own food on your own property. Any government "authority" that attempts to take this right away from you is no authority at all: it is a tyranny.

With food prices already skyrocketing nationwide, and food security on the brink of systemic failures, only a government run by absolute fools would try to limit local food production. Perhaps when these bureaucrats are all starving one day, they can eat their regulations.

Sources for this article include:
(1) http://michiganradio.org/post/state-agricult...
(2) http://www.offthegridnews.com/2014/05/02/mic...

UN STATES SMALL SCALE FARMING THE ONLY WAY TO FEED THE WORLD

TECHNOLOGYWATER

UN Report Says Small-Scale Organic Farming Only Way to Feed the World

Image: eatdrinkbetter.com

Nick Meyer | AltHealthWORKS

Even as the United States government continues to push for the use of more chemically-intensive and corporate-dominated farming methods such as GMOs and monoculture-based crops, the United Nations is once against sounding the alarm about the urgent need to return to (and develop) a more sustainable, natural and organic system.

That was the key point of a new publication from the UN Commission on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) titled“Trade and Environment Review 2013: Wake Up Before It’s Too Late,” which included contributions from more than 60 experts around the world.

The cover of the report looks like that of a blockbuster documentary or Hollywood movie, and the dramatic nature of the title cannot be understated: The time is now to switch back to our natural farming roots.

The New UN Farming Report “Wake Up Before It’s Too Late.”
The New UN Farming Report “Wake Up Before It’s Too Late.” Click here to read it.
The findings on the report seem to echo those of a December 2010 UN Report in many ways, one that essentially said organic and small-scale farming is the answer for “feeding the world,” not GMOs and monocultures.

According to the new UN report, major changes are needed in our food, agriculture and trade systems, with a shift toward local small-scale farmers and food systems recommended.

Diversity of farms, reducing the use of fertilizer and other changes are desperately needed according to the report, which was highlighted in this article from the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

It also said that global trade rules should be reformed in order to work toward these ends, which is unfortunately the opposite of what mega-trade deals like the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the U.S.-EU Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are seeking to accomplish.

The Institute noted that these pending deals are “primarily designed to strengthen the hold of multinational corporate and financial firms on the global economy…” rather than the reflect the urgent need for a shift in agriculture described in the new report.

Even global security may be at stake according to the report, as food prices (and food price speculating) continue to rise.

“This implies a rapid and significant shift from conventional, monoculture-based and high-external-input-dependent industrial production toward mosaics of sustainable, regenerative production systems that also considerably improve the productivity of small-scale farmers,” the report concludes.

You can read more about the report from the Institute by visiting their website here.


http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf

Dr William B. Mount