The Criminalization of Normal Farming
When routine work gets re-labeled as a “crime,” enforcement becomes a lever — not a safeguard.
There’s a quiet shift happening across the U.S. farm belt and beyond — not in the form of one big federal ban, but in thousands of smaller decisions: a permit interpretation here, a zoning letter there, a “public health” order somewhere else.
The pattern isn’t that agriculture is being outlawed on paper.
It’s that ordinary farm activities are being re-framed as:
environmental crimes
zoning violations
public health risks
water theft
unlicensed food distribution
illegal structures
unpermitted land disturbance
And once “normal” becomes “illegal,” you don’t need a statewide ban to change behavior. You just need selective enforcement — and a few high-profile examples to teach everybody else to stay quiet.
Below are real cases — names, places, agencies, court records — showing how this is playing out in practice.
Washington State: irrigation becomes a “seizure-level” offense
The Greiff case — fines, liens, and a farm put at risk
In Spokane County, Washington, farmer Robert H. Greiff has been hit with escalating penalties over alleged unpermitted irrigation of a specific parcel — culminating in six-figure fines and a lien placed against the farm. Coverage describes the state’s posture as moving beyond punishment into something that threatens the operation’s future.
Washington’s Department of Ecology itself describes a chain of enforcement: warnings, a cease-and-desist order, penalties, then larger penalties — and notes the consequences of unpaid enforcement (including property lien).
Why this matters:
Water law is complex. Paper trails go back generations. Boundaries, historic use, and “which field” can become the whole fight. When the state can convert a water dispute into financial penalties + legal encumbrances, you get a blueprint for a pressure campaign: comply, settle, or bleed out.
This is the criminalization model in its purest form:
It’s not “you can’t farm.” It’s “you can’t afford to.”
Colorado: “Is growing food illegal?” The greenhouse that became a courthouse battle
The Loop family greenhouse — zoning, permitting, and Farm Stand law collision
In Teller County, Colorado, Virginia (Jenny) Loop and her family built a roughly 2,856 sq. ft. greenhouse on their property — intending to grow and sell produce. County officials ordered the structure to come down, arguing zoning and permitting violations. The family argues they’re protected by Colorado’s Farm Stand Act and agricultural exemptions, while the county argues the property’s classification and local rules don’t allow it.
The dispute escalated into litigation: county commissioners sued seeking a judge’s order to dismantle the greenhouse.
Why this matters:
This isn’t a case about dumping waste or poisoning a river. It’s about growing food under glass.
And yet the “normal farming” activity is treated like an unlawful build — with enforcement tools that resemble what you’d expect for serious violations: stop-work demands, daily fines, court action.
This is how agriculture gets boxed in at the county level:
the state says one thing (“farm stands,” “right to sell”)
the county says another (“residential classification,” “commercial greenhouse”)
the farmer is stuck in the middle paying attorneys to prove that tomatoes are not contraband.
Pennsylvania: raw milk + on-farm food becomes injunctions, contempt fights, and ongoing litigation
The Amos Miller saga — the “public health” frame with criminal-like leverage
Pennsylvania’s long-running enforcement conflict involving Amish farmer Amos Miller has included administrative searches, injunction fights, and court proceedings tied to raw milk and food processing rules. The National Agricultural Law Center summarizes the regulatory context (raw milk permit requirements in PA; federal interstate restrictions; state action and litigation posture).
Separately, the U.S. Department of Justice has pursued Miller’s farm related to uninspected / misbranded meat and poultry — resulting in federal court actions and ongoing compliance oversight.
Why this matters:
Food safety is real — but so is the enforcement reality: once a case is framed as “public health risk,” regulators can use extraordinary tools (injunctions, inspections, contempt motions, escalating penalties) that function like criminal punishment even when the underlying dispute is about permitting and inspection pathways.
And here’s the bigger story: these cases don’t just discipline one farmer — they send a message to every farm experimenting with direct-to-consumer food:
“Try to step outside the industrial channel, and you may spend your life in court.”
Vermont: the “farm store” becomes a land-use battlefield
Sunnymede / Hartland farm store — Act 250, town plans, and years of appeals
Vermont’s Act 250 development regime has turned farm commerce projects into multi-year legal contests. The proposed Sunnymede Farm Store in Hartland — a 9,000 sq. ft. farm store project — became the subject of appeals and reached the Vermont Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of the project moving forward.
Why this matters:
Farmers are told to “diversify,” “add value,” “sell local.” Then they try to build the physical place to do it — and land-use law turns it into a procedural grinder.
Even when the final outcome favors the farm, the process can still be the punishment:
years of delay
legal bills
investor uncertainty
financing risk
project redesigns to satisfy planning frameworks built for non-farm development
This is criminalization’s quieter cousin: not handcuffs — paperwork attrition.
When manure is treated like “criminal pollution”
Oregon: Noble Family Dairy and the line between “violation” and “crime”
In Oregon, Noble Family Dairy pleaded guilty to a Clean Water Act offense tied to manure discharges (described as a misdemeanor), with reporting on alleged dumping over a period in 2019 and permit compliance issues.
Iowa: manure application runoff leading to federal sentencing terms
Reporting on an Iowa case (Etcher Family Farms) describes sentencing outcomes including probation and a substantial fine tied to manure runoff and Clean Water Act violations.
North Carolina: Freedman Farms hog-waste discharge and federal penalties
The DOJ documented the Freedman Farms Clean Water Act prosecution, including guilty pleas and a significant financial judgment connected to a hog-waste discharge event.
Why this matters:
Manure management failures can be serious. But the trendline farmers notice is that the regulatory world is increasingly comfortable using criminal frameworks — not just civil penalties — even when the proximate cause is operational complexity, weather, equipment failure, or disputed interpretations of permits.
When that line moves, it doesn’t just punish bad actors. It makes every operator feel one storm, one overflow, one inspector interpretation away from becoming the example.
When “normal” becomes “illegal,” enforcement becomes selective
This is the Yanasa-sized point:
Selective enforcement is not a conspiracy — it’s a structural outcome.
If the rulebook is thick enough that everyone is technically out of compliance somewhere (or can be interpreted that way), then enforcement stops being a simple “right vs wrong” exercise.
It becomes:
who gets inspected
who gets warned vs fined
who gets time to correct
who gets the maximum penalty
who gets escalated to court
whose case becomes “the story”
And that is a form of control — even when the statutes were written with good intentions.
What’s “new” right now (late 2025): local enforcement is accelerating
The reason this is high-engagement now is that the cases are stacking up in the same year:
Washington: six-figure irrigation enforcement tied to a specific field and water-right dispute pathways; liens as leverage.
Colorado: a food-growing greenhouse escalated into a lawsuit with demolition on the line.
Vermont: farm commerce and land-use fights continue to define what “farm” is allowed to look like in practice.
The playbook farmers should recognize
Across these cases, the enforcement pattern rhymes:
Define the activity as non-farm (commercial structure, unlicensed sales, “development,” “discharge,” “unauthorized use”)
Trigger a rule most farms can’t navigate alone (Act 250, NPDES/CAFO permit terms, food code, local land-use regs, water-rights bureaucracy)
Escalate from compliance → punishment (daily fines, liens, injunctions, contempt, criminal charges)
Create a deterrence headline (“illegal water use,” “public health risk,” “pollution,” “unpermitted structure”)
The rest of the county/state learns: don’t expand, don’t innovate, don’t fight — or you’ll be the next case study.
What to ask the “officials”
If you turn this into a Yanasa TV-style investigative Substack piece, the clean questions are:
Where is the line between “compliance” and “punishment”?
Why do some operators get technical assistance and others get maximum penalties? (Ecology itself cites attempts at assistance in WA — so when does that flip?)
What’s the appeals process, and how much does it cost?
How often are these statutes enforced, and against whom?
Do exemptions (farm stand acts, ag building exemptions, right-to-farm frameworks) actually protect farmers — or just create more courtroom ambiguity?
“You don’t ban farming. You regulate it into a legal minefield.”
The scariest part of these stories isn’t that the law exists. It’s that the law is so sprawling — and the enforcement tools so sharp — that normal farming can be treated as unlawful whenever someone decides it should be.
That’s not how you build a resilient food system.
That’s how you build a system where only the biggest players can afford to survive it.