Friday, March 6, 2015

Bad State Regulations

Minnesota aims to fine family farmers $500 per day, Posted on March 6, 2015 Written by nourishingliberty.com
If the Min­nesota Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (MDA) gets its way, Lake View Nat­ural Dairy Farm, owned and oper­ated by David and Heidi Berglund and their daugh­ter Lyn­d­say, will be fined $500 per day until they sub­mit to an uncon­sti­tu­tional inspec­tion of their farm.
When the farm briefly explored the pos­si­bil­ity of sell­ing milk for pro­cess­ing, this trig­gered a call to the MDA by the proces­sor, and the MDA real­ized they had no record or con­trol over this farm.
On Octo­ber 14, 2014 the MDA demanded to do an inspec­tion of the farm, which the fam­ily refused on the grounds that the Min­nesota Con­sti­tu­tion acknowl­edges their right to ped­dle the prod­ucts of their farm. Now, the MDA hopes to fine the small oper­a­tion a crip­pling $500 per day after the March 9, 2015 hear­ing if they are found to be in contempt.
Lake View Nat­ural Dairy Farm, in the quaint town of Grand Marais, MN, has been a sta­ple in the com­mu­nity for the past 100 years that it has been in the Berglund fam­ily. Cur­rently, they pro­vide raw milk and locally pro­duced meats to their neigh­bors, vis­i­tors and tourists. The locals adore the farm, the fam­ily, and the products.
Many who vaca­tion in Grand Marais for the sum­mer months make the farm their first stop when they arrive in the town with a pop­u­la­tion of 1,300. Some cus­tomers drive over 200 miles from the twin cities for the prod­ucts from Lake View Nat­ural Dairy Farm.
In the spirit of a fam­ily farm oper­a­tion, the senior Berglunds gave their daugh­ter, Lyn­d­say, milk­ing priv­i­leges 7 years ago, which she has whole­heart­edly embraced. The farm boasts a herd of 85–100 dairy cows and beef cat­tle, lay­ing hens, and pork prod­ucts. Heidi Berglund makes the cov­eted yogurt and but­ter from the milk and pro­vides baked good­ies to round out the farm’s offerings.
True to its name, the farm sits on an eco­log­i­cally sta­ble piece of land over­look­ing Lake Supe­rior. As a century-old sta­ple in the com­mu­nity, the fam­ily is well respected and liked as providers of food to their neigh­bors. It is a dis­con­nect that they are now being held in con­tempt of court for oper­at­ing a farm and pro­vid­ing locally pro­duced foods to their neighbors.
Cus­tomers of the farm are accus­tomed to con­duct­ing busi­ness com­pletely on the honor sys­tem. A small cash box in the milk­ing house is avail­able for the com­mu­nity to leave cash for a gal­lon or two of milk true to the Min­nesota Con­sti­tu­tion say­ing that farm­ers have a right to ped­dle their prod­ucts directly to the con­sumer.
What is this Really About?
For about two years now, the MDA has requested to do an inspec­tion on the farm cit­ing that the farm must pas­teur­ize the milk prior to sell­ing it. (For the full legal back­ground on this, see David Gumpert’s excel­lent cov­er­age.)
This raises the ques­tion, yet again, whether or not humans have the right to engage in peace­ful, vol­un­tary exchanges for the foods of their choice.
What the Berglunds are doing in pro­vid­ing food to their com­mu­nity is his­tor­i­cally what built this coun­try and con­tin­ues to build com­mu­ni­ties. They are cul­ti­vat­ing land for the pur­pose of feed­ing their neigh­bors. They are adding to the aes­thet­ics of their region by keep­ing land in pro­duc­tion. The Berglund fam­ily is lov­ingly grow­ing com­mu­nity and nur­tur­ing bonds between com­mu­nity members.
Now, peo­ple who work for the MDA are assum­ing author­ity, decid­ing that they have the right to lord over this peace­ful fam­ily and demand that the fam­ily con­duct busi­ness in a new way that would, quite lit­er­ally, put them out of busi­ness and steal a won­der­ful resource from the region.
Although the lan­guage of the state con­sti­tu­tion is on the side of the farm­ers, the ques­tion here is one of justice.
  • When is it okay to exces­sively fine a fam­ily for feed­ing their community?
  • Who gets to decide what foods a farm can pro­vide to their neigh­bors who are enthu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pants in the exchange?
  • How does the MDA get to demand to inspect a family’s farm­ing oper­a­tion and demand that they change it?
  • Why does the state agency have the assumed author­ity to inter­fere between a small farm and those eager to pur­chase from the farm?
    If there is a law that has David Berglund in con­tempt of court for not allow­ing aggres­sive, sub­ver­sive agents on his prop­erty, that law has no place in a peace­ful Amer­i­can community.
    This is NOT, and never has been, a safety issue. The farm under scrutiny has been pro­vid­ing their com­mu­nity with raw milk and other whole­some farm prod­ucts includ­ing chick­ens, eggs, pork and beef with­out ever so much as a sus­pected ill­ness since incep­tion. The MDA’s demands, exces­sive fines and now its attempt to hold the fam­ily in con­tempt of court, take its author­ity out of context.
    While the fam­ily and com­mu­nity suffer—as beau­ti­fully artic­u­lated by cus­tomer Greg Gentz—from not know­ing how this will play out, the MDA con­tin­ues its gra­tu­itous approach of “com­pli­ance for the sake of compliance.”
    How You Can Help the Berglunds
    What does this farm fam­ily need? They need sup­port at their hear­ing for con­tempt of court on March 9, 2015 with warm bod­ies in the court­room. They need the sup­port of their com­mu­nity by con­tin­u­ing to pur­chase their products.
    The Berglunds need us to stand in unity with them nation­ally and rec­og­nize that it is not the place of gov­ern­ment to inter­fere with the direct farmer-to-consumer rela­tion­ship in peace­ful, vol­un­tary exchange for food.
    If you are any­where near Cook County Min­nesota on March 9, please show up in quiet sup­port of David and Heidi Berglund, and their daugh­ter, Lyn­d­say, who have spent count­less days lov­ingly car­ing for their ani­mals and their community.
    It is through your sup­port that, as indi­vid­u­als, we can renor­mal­ize the rela­tion­ship between food pro­ducer and food con­sumer under­stand­ing that there is noth­ing wrong, or even ille­gal, with a farmer feed­ing his community.
    Ulti­mately, this case isn’t about milk or this par­tic­u­lar farm; it is about whether strangers work­ing for a state agency will con­trol peace­ful exchanges for food between happy neigh­bors or if the com­mu­nity mem­bers have the pre­rog­a­tive to make their own choices. 
    Related Posts
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)