End of I-300 will heat up local battles

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University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s David Aiken, a specialist in agricultural law, sees a future in which zoning battles will flare up more frequently across rural Nebraska. That will be one of the biggest impacts of the court ruling that struck down Initiative 300, the state’s ban against corporate farming, Aiken said.

From this perspective Aiken’s prediction has a whole lot more plausibility than ordinary crystal ball-gazing.

In fact the future he envisions looks as clear as the picture on a high-definition plasma screen with a digital signal.

Across the country corporations commonly operate large livestock confinement operations.

Nebraska will be virgin territory.

“They will come to the counties where zoning lets them in,” Aiken said. “And so the battlefield will shift. In fact I think it already has shifted. It will shift from Initiative 300 to county zoning.”

Legal opinion is mixed on the likelihood that the decision by U.S. District Judge Laurie Smith-Camp will be upheld on appeal.

Aiken believes that it will. Roger McEowen, an associate professor at Iowa State University, thinks the opinion is “poorly reasoned” and will be struck down depending on which panel of judges in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals is assigned the case.

A panel of Eighth Circuit judges already has struck down a South Dakota law that used some of the same language as Nebraska’s Initiative 300, which was one of the strongest anti-corporate bans in the country.

In any event, Initiative 300 probably will continue to be the law of the land for perhaps two years while the appeal process plays out.

In the near term Smith-Camp’s ruling might pump new energy into local decision-making by county governments on whether to seek the state’s official designation as “livestock friendly.”

So far only Morrill County has earned the designation. Another eight states are involved in the approval process. More than another 15 states have begun talking about seeking the designation.

Agricultural leaders in the state have watched in dismay as the number of hogs produced in the state has declined steadily. The number of hogs in Nebraska has dropped to its lowest level since 1975.

Nonetheless large hog farm operations have been controversial. Seward County last year rejected a proposal for a 12,000 hog operation near Milford. Residents have filed lawsuits over odor complaints. Hog producers have filed lawsuits alleging that zoning regulations are unfair.

But that’s only a foreshadowing of what lies ahead if Initiative 300 is tossed on history’s trash heap after almost a quarter century as the law of the land.