Local Governments and the Special Status of Bona Fide Farms
I posted a picture of the new sign we hung on our farm that is required by NC law for liability protection. We had some good conversation in the comments section. Well any comments is a good amount for our little blog but it seemed people were interested in the government and how it has an effect on farming. I personally am a libertarian so my view of the government isn’t too rosy in most regards however when it comes to farming in NC, I have a somewhat different view. Compared to all other forms of business, I think farming is one of the sweet spots when it comes to government involvement (I’m referring to state government here, the Feds, ugh.) We have many support programs like extension agents, soil and water, etc. We have lots of grant and cost share programs. We get special exemptions from the NC DOT for weights and CDL requirements. But more importantly to me we have a lot of the protections under Bona Fide farms, some of which are relatively new. The article in the link above does a great job of detailing all these protections and giving some back story to each. This is my go to article for people I talk to who are interested in farming or getting into farming in NC. When I was reading the comments to the earlier post it occurred to me that while I would have shared this info with you in an individual conversation, I hadn’t shared it to everyone on the blog. Shame on me. I guess I just assumed nobody would want to read boring old law stuff.