Minnesota Family Farms Take on the Law.
Recently Eckert AgriMarketing discovered a disturbing lawsuit in Lake Elmo, Minnesota that is hurting several small family farms. Currently farmers in Lake Elmo can only sell the products they grow at their farm. If they do not grow the crops inside the city limits, they cannot sell it.
This law goes as far as saying even if the farmer owns a parcel of land just outside Lake Elmo, they cannot sell the crop within the city limits. If you disobey and sell agricultural products that are not grown in Lake Elmo, you could spend 90 days in jail and fined $1,000.
Institute for Justice is teaming up with the farmers affected by this law to help bring on a federal lawsuit which the small farms couldn’t bring about themselves. Institute for Justice believes this law violates a protection Americans receive in the U.S. Constitution: Right to free trade. Meaning Lake Elmo does not have the right to restrict the sales of agricultural products because they were grown outside the city limits.
City officials say they support this law because it will make farmers grow the products that they sell, keeping Lake Elmo a rural area and keeping out products grown elsewhere. But actually this law could end up hurting many small farmers here and everywhere and has potential to put these farmers out of business. Because when farmers in Lake Elmo have a bad season, they rely on small farmers in other states to grow products they would want to sell at their farm markets. This law ends up hurting not only local farmers, but out-of-state farmers who rely on selling crops to the small farms in Lake Elmo.
Is this law fair? Should farmers in Lake Elmo be restricted to sell only what they grow in the city limits? Or does Institute for Justice make a valid point by saying this violates our constitutional right? I welcome your comments.
Watch this video clip to learn more.
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