Plain Talk: ‘If we want to be a food desert let’s keep doing what we’re doing’

MINOT, N.D. — For a few century, North Dakota has had a ban on company farming. That is to say that if you wish to run a farming or ranching enterprise in our state, you may solely do it with relations who’re no extra distant in relation to you than first cousins.

However there was a push, in recent times, to ease up on the ban, notably within the space of animal agriculture. The argument is that permitting enterprise constructions that are not simply between relations would open up new worlds of capital for funding in agriculture companies right here.

Rep. Paul Thomas, a Republican from Velva who’s a fourth-generation farmer, is backing Home Invoice 1371 within the present legislative session in Bismarck, and it will company farming in animal agriculture akin to swine, dairy, and poultry.

But in 2015, the legislature handed the same invoice. The North Dakota Farmer’s Union efficiently referred it to the poll the place it died with greater than 75% of North Dakotans voting it down. What’s modified between at times to make Thomas suppose his invoice has an opportunity?

“The largest panorama change is the event of soybean crush vegetation,” he mentioned on this episode of Plain Speak. Thomas says. Soybean vegetation might be an enormous supply of animal feed, which is able to enhance curiosity in animal agriculture in our state.

He additionally argues that the present company farming ban is not doing a lot to guard farming in North Dakota. “If we wish to be a meals desert let’s hold doing what we’re doing,” he mentioned.

Responding to criticism of his invoice coming from NDFU President Mark Watne, who argues HB 1371 would damage household farms, Thomas says the decline within the variety of dairy farms in North Dakota is “the one argument I have to make.”

He notes that in 2009 there have been 193 dairy farms working within the state. At present, he claims, there are solely 37.

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