BISMARCK, N.D. -- North Dakota's House Agriculture Committee on March 6 voted 8-5 to recommend a do-pass on a bill that would create exemptions for dairy and swine in the state anti-corporate farming law.
Committee Chairman Dennis Johnson, R-Devils Lake, said he'll carry SB 2351 to the full House next week.
Committee members unanimously voted for an amendment by Rep. Craig Headland, R-Montpelier, to require a corporation establish a swine or dairy farm within a three-year period. A new farm would be operated by a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) and must be a domestic corporation. It would give the agriculture commissioner authority to adopt other rules and notify the attorney general, but Headland acknowledged a corporation can be involved in a series of legally distinct corporations or partnerships, meaning it can be involved in more than one corporation taking advantage of the exemption.
The committee rejected 3-10 a Headland amendment that would have added beef feedlot operations to the exemptions.
North Dakota Farmers Union President Mark Watne said he was disappointed, but said his organization will work to prevent passage in the full Senate and prevent its signing by the governor. Watne and other critics say the bill opens the door to corporate ownership of beef feedlots above the bill's current size cap of 640 acres, or one square mile.
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In an eight-hour committee hearing on March 5, the bill's prime sponsor state Sen. Terry Wanzek, R-Jamestown, told the Committee proposed exemptions to the state's anti-corporate farming law are only for swine and dairy. He said the change is designed to complement the state's strong crop sector -- both for a place to market grain and for a source of nutrients for crop production.
