Anti-Corporate Attitudes and Laws Harm Farmers: New at Reason

Ever since the awful Supreme Court decision in Wickard v. Filburn—a 1942 case in which the Court upheld a New Deal USDA program that prohibited farmers from growing more wheat than the USDA said they could, even if the purportedly excess portion did not enter the stream of commerce—the question of just how much the federal government could meddle in farming (and other non-commerce commerce) has been an open one.

But if the federal government can clamp down on what and how much farmers can farm, state governments are also in on the act, determining even who may farm, and to whom farmers may sell their farms.

The issue is corporate farming: farms owned not by Old MacDonald but instead by a company. Critics paint corporate farms as bigger, sometimes foreign-owned, insular, pollution machines. Food policy writer Baylen Linnekin explains the consequences.

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