Local Government: Right to Farm

Be a farmer, go to jail?
The D. A. says no

August 1999

Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask met with farmers at the Farm Bureau office on August 5, 1999, to reassure them that county and state Right To Farm laws protect established farmers from nuisance complaints, like the one against a Nuevo hay grower for baling hay at night.

When word got out that alfalfa grower Bob Piester was facing criminal misdemeanor charges for baling hay, it sounded like a joke. On second thought, it wasn't funny, and letters and calls started pouring in from across the county, state and nation.

It was all a misunderstanding, Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask assured farmers at an August 5, 1999, meeting. The county and state Right To Farm laws protect established farmers from nuisance complaints about customary farm practices. The case against Piester should never have been filed.

What really got the industry riled was a July 27 letter to Piester from a deputy district attorney: "Although we are choosing at this time not to file criminal charges, we take these violations seriously. If you are cited for disturbing the peace again under the same circumstances, i.e. bailing hay in the middle of the night, we will file charges and proceed accordingly." Among the protests to the district attorney's office were letters from the National Hay Growers' Association, the California Alfalfa Forage Association and the San Joaquin Valley Hay Growers' Association.

Trask subsequently wrote Piester, "Being relatively new, the prosecutor was unaware of Riverside County Ordinance 625.1, the Right to Farm, providing a defense against nuisance actions. In light of this ordinance, our office finds that there was no violation of the law and our previous letter is rescinded. We apologize for any inconvenience or concern that the letter may have caused you or the farmers."

The sequence of events began on June 8, when Piester was baling hay near Sun City at night, a common and necessary practice to capture the right moisture content and produce quality hay. A woman living in a travel trailer on an adjacent property called the Sheriff's Department and demanded that the noise be stopped.

The deputy who responded called in for advice from his supervisor, two more deputies then came out, and Piester was detained for 49 minutes before being released.

Piester was back in the same field on the night of June 21, and the same woman complained. She demanded that Piester be cited, so a complaint was filed.

Illustrating the unfamiliarity with farming of the people involved, Piester said, the woman's husband complained that the baler had no license plate (where implements of husbandry don't require plates,) and the deputy questioned why Piester was "cutting the grass" in the middle of the night.

Piester was ordered to appear in a Perris court but the charge was dropped. In the meantime, Piester had received a handwritten letter from the woman who filed the complaint, saying she was withdrawing her complaint, in part because she had left the area.

As it does when such situations arise, Farm Bureau subsequently provided Right To Farm information to the sheriff's station handling the complaint.

After Piester received the July 27 letter, hay grower and Farm Bureau Director Don Bean faxed information to some of his contacts in the industry, and word quickly spread about the letter from the deputy district attorney threatening to prosecute Piester for continuing to bale hay at night.

Responding to the widespread concern in the industry, Farm Bureau invited District Attorney Trask to meet with farmers to clear the air. Trask explained the misunderstanding and assured farmers his staff would be made aware of the Right To Farm laws. He said other law enforcement agencies probably need to be reminded as well.

In a memo to the Perris sheriff's station watch commander, Farm Bureau said, "This is precisely the kind of situation that the county and state laws were intended to address," adding that, "The specific point of these two laws is that no customary agricultural activity can become a nuisance after it has been operating for three years, due to any changed conditions about the locality. These laws anticipate that new residents in an agricultural area may object to noise, dust and odors that are part of farming."

Riverside County Ordinance 625 and California Civil Code Section 3482.5 both provide a basic policy that, "No agricultural activity, operation or facility, or appurtenances thereof, conducted or maintained for commercial purposes, and in a manner consistent with proper and accepted customs and standards, as established and followed by similar agricultural operations in the same locality, shall be or become a nuisance, private or public, due to any changed condition in or about the locality, after the same has been in operation for more than three years if it was not a nuisance at the time it began."

Right To Farm laws were promulgated by California Women for Agriculture in the 1980s as a protection against increasing urban intrusion into agricultural areas.

For more about Right To Farm laws, go to any of these pages:

Right to Farm
Ordinance 625