Last year the Republican legislature passed and the Republican governor signed a bill overturning a North Dakota law, passed in 1932, that barred non-family corporations from owning farms.
North Dakota allows for a referendum. This occurs when citizens don’t like a bill passed by the legislature. They collect a set amount of signatures on a petition, the bill is put on hold until the people vote, and if they vote no, they have, in effect, vetoed the legislation.
This past June the voters of North Dakota overwhelmingly voted against the legislation.
You are probably asking yourself, if public sentiment was so heavily against the legislation, why was it passed in the first place? Would it help if I told you that corporate farm interests have lots of money?
Incidentally, the Farm Bureau, which generally represents the largest and wealthiest farmers, has said it will go to federal court to overturn the results of the referendum.
A spokesman for the North Dakota Farmers’ Union, which supported the referendum, said “We simply do not believe in our communities that the ownership of land in the hands of a corporate structure is in the interest of long-term agricultural production.”
Information for this post was taken from Julie Bosman, “North Dakotans Reconsider a Core Value,” NYT, (June 13, 2016), pp. A8, A11. This is why I read my old NYT when I come back from vacation. I’m pretty sure this was not covered on MSNBC, or CNN, or Fox.
No comments:
Post a Comment