What does ‘right to farm’ really mean?

Dear Editor:

This letter is in response to Mike Mason's letter from the May 30 edition. Private property rights are important to this county and this country.

I believe that C.R.S. 35-3.5-101 stands for a simple fact — Colorado is a farming state; therefore, don't come here and buy property in a farming community and then decide that you are going to file a lawsuit against a farmer for farming because you don't like the farming environment.

What does "right to farm" mean or what did the legislature intend by the right to farm bill? The only ones that can positively answer that question are the ones that wrote the law. However, a judge can also define what the law means. To define the farming operation for a farm, you must pick a point in time and define the farming practices in place. Mr. Mason's conviction about Colorado's "right to farm state" it would seem to be an anything goes at any time approach. However, one can just as easily be convinced that the "right to farm" simply means the right to continue farming the way that you have been farming, regardless of who moves in next to you. From that standpoint, making a major change to your farming operation does indeed mean that a permit to change should be required. A chicken coup, a pig pen, or a cattle barn with a couple hundred animals in the operation might be what is on the property next to yours. If the farm chooses to go to factory production with 200,000 or more animals in a confined space, most logical thinking people would that as a significant change to a farm operation. That significant change in operation could have a significant impact on the rest of the community and completely change the nature of the community.

We all have legal rights that we are entitled to exercise. However, the rule of law protects all of us such that no one can exercise their legal rights and as a result inflict harm on others. To my way of thinking, Mark Roeber's ability to recognize these truths means that he is indeed worthy of receiving your vote.

Mike Drake

Paonia

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