FARGO, N.D. -- There is more support this year to make changes in North Dakota's anti-corporate farming law. The proposed changes are reasonable but won't guarantee a rejuvenation of dairy and hog farms, as intended.
The Senate recently passed a bipartisan bill that would partially lift restrictions on dairy and hog operations. The change would allow a nonfamily corporation or a limited liability company to operate dairy and hog production facilities on no more than 640 acres. The bill's sponsors think lifting the livestock restrictions would give North Dakota operators access to capital that is difficult to come by under the current law.
That may be the case for a very small number of operators who would invest in big livestock enterprises. The limitation of a square mile of land is not much of a limit, given the way modern dairy cow and milking operations and sprawling hog barns are set up. Nonetheless, if lifting the anti-corporate restrictions on livestock operators can stimulate more milk and hog production in the state, it would be a good thing.
It's also a big "if."
For example, distance from dairy farm to milk processing plant is a barrier to dairy farm growth. Even if a law change generated more dairy cow operations, it is unlikely milk processing dairies, most of which closed decades ago in North Dakota, would reappear.
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On the other side of the farm coin is the law itself. The reason for the anti-corporate farming law -- to preserve small and medium-sized family farms -- was discredited a long time ago. Trends toward bigger farms were driven by the economics of production agriculture. The North Dakota law did virtually nothing to slow or reverse the trends. The mega-farms on today's landscape are structured as family corporations under the law, but they are big and getting bigger, thus they are fewer.
Interestingly, the mega-farm trend did not take hold in the dairy sector. (And as hogs go, North Dakota is not among major producers.) Other factors drove dairy down. The anti-corporate farming law, which was originally written to help family farms -- dairy and otherwise, did not help.
All these parts of the puzzle affect the debate in Bismarck. But as the numbers over the years demonstrated, the current law cannot hold back the macro-economic tides of production agriculture. In that context, tweaking the anti-corporate farming law for dairy and hog producers won't do any harm, but in the long run it won't make much difference.
Editor's note: This editorial originally appeared in The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. The Forum and Agweek are owned by Forum Communications Co.
