Court Opinion

ID: 9696259
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 18:42:56.901931+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:20:20.310716
License: Public Domain

UHLENHOPP, Justice
(dissenting).
Do large mechanized chicken houses in which chickens are raised from small chicks to laying hens constitute buildings “primarily adapted, by reason of nature and area, for use for agricultural purposes”? Such 'is the question posed by this county zoning case.
We may put aside cases involving poultry houses as nuisances, such as Higgins v. Decorah Produce Co., 214 Iowa 276, 242 N.W. 109. No such charge is made here.
Plaintiff Farmegg Products owns a tract of land in Humboldt County, Iowa, outside of any city or town. Farmegg proposes to construct two poultry houses on the tract, and the buildings will have no other function. Each building will be 40 by 400 feet in size. In each building, 40,000 newly-hatched chicks will be placed and raised to 22-weeks of age. The birds, as egg layers, will then be placed in other buildings, which are not involved in this litigation. The chicks will be kept inside the two buildings until shipped to the laying houses. The two buildings will contain equipment to feed and water the chicks and to remove manure, which will be hauled away. Crops will not be grown on the premises.
Farmegg’s difficulty is that the county zoning ordinance requires buildings to be set back 200 feet from the highway, and Farmegg’s tract is not large enough to permit that much setback. But the statute under which the ordinance was adopted exempts buildings used for agricultural purposes, and Farmegg claims its buildings will be within the exemption.
Two main types of zoning exemptions exist in this respect, a narrower exemption for “farming” and a broader one for “agriculture”. Compare Chudnov v. Board of Appeals, 113 Conn. 49, 154 A. 161, with Moulton v. Building Inspector, 312 Mass. 195, 43 N.E.2d 662. In keeping with our traditions as an agricultural state, our legislature adopted the broader exemption in § 358A.2, Code, 1971:
No regulation or ordinance adopted under the provisions of this chapter shall be construed to apply to land, farm houses, farm barns, farm out-buildings or other buildings, structures, or erections which are primarily adapted, by reason of nature and area, for use for agricultural purposes, while so used. * * * (Italics added.)
Although “farming” means tilling the soil, it also includes incidental activities such as raising livestock and feeding the livestock hay and grain produced. Black’s Law Dictionary (4th Ed.). “Agriculture,” however, is a generic term. It includes tilling the soil, but it also means animal husbandry independently. Thus “agriculture” is not defined as tilling the soil including animal husbandry, as farming ordinarily is; it means “cultivating the soil, harvesting crops, and raising livestock”. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (italics added). As stated regarding the zoning ordinance involved in Fidler v. Zoning Board of Adjustment, 408 Pa. 260, 266, 182 A.2d 692, 695:
Clearly, the word “agriculture” therein does not mean only the tilling of the soil. The raising and housing of turkeys *461is well within the reasonable meaning of the term. It is significant that the term “agriculture” was used and not “farming,” which might well impose a far different connotation.
Likewise, where the zoning exemption was for “farms, greenhouses, nurseries and truck gardens,” the court said in Town of Lincoln v. Murphy, 314 Mass. 16, 21, 49 N.E.2d 453, 456:
An exemption for agricultural purposes is much broader than one for “farms, greenhouses, nurseries and truck gardens.”
See also cases from other fields of law: Crouse v. Lloyd’s Turkey Ranch, 251 Iowa 156, 162-163, 100 N.W.2d 115, 119 (workmen’s compensation case — “We think the holding that the defendant was engaged in two businesses: one, the agricultural pursuit of raising and marketing turkeys and other poultry, and the other, that Of operating a packing plant, is fairly warranted by the record.” Italics added); Franklin v. McCoy, 234 Ark. 558, 353 S.W.2d 166 (workmen’s compensation — 75,000 chickens raised, no feed produced or land tilled— held agricultural); Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Recreation District v. Hix, 136 Colo. 316, 319, 316 P.2d 1041, 1043 (recreation district — -“the term ‘agriculture’ includes the rearing, feeding and management of livestock”); Department of Labor & Industries v. McLain, 66 Wash.2d 54, 401 P.2d 211 (industrial insurance — chicken raising much like case at bar, no land tilled —held, tilling of land not necessary for exemption).
The distinction between farming and agriculture is reflected throughout the zoning decisions — although courts seem to tighten the particular exemption when the enterprise is within an urban area. See Anno., 97 A.L.R.2d 702 at 704. Thus poultry or animal raising, without raising crops in any substantial amount, has generally been held not to be within an exemption for “farming”. Chudnov v. Board of Appeals, 113 Conn. 49, 154 A. 161 (three acres solely for raising chickens in residential zone— not “farming”); Town of Lincoln v. Murphy, 314 Mass. 16, 49 N.E.2d 453 (sole purpose to raise 2,500 hogs in residential zone —not a “farm”) ; Colasuonno v. Dassler, 183 Misc. 904, 51 N.Y.S.2d 870 (raising chickens on two and one-half acres in residence zone — not a “farm”); Johnson v. Debaun, 206 Misc. 806, 135 N.Y.S.2d 217 (farrowing large quantities of pigs in residential zone — not a “farm”). But raising poultry or animals and also some crops, although the crops are not fed to the livestock, has been held to be farming. Winship v. Inspector of Buildings, 274 Mass. 380, 174 N.E. 476 (1,000-bird chicken house plus 125 apple trees and five or six acres of vegetables — held a “farm”). But cf. Stout v. Mitschele, 135 N.J.L. 406, 52 A.2d 422 (dairying discontinued and horse raising begun — held “farming”); De Benedetti v. River Vale Township, 21 N.J.Super. 430, 91 A.2d 353 (enlarged chicken house alone —exempt under “any type of farming”).
On the other hand, raising and keeping poultry and animals has been held within the meaning of the term “agriculture” in zoning cases whether or not crops are produced. Board of County Comm’rs of Johnson County v. Brown, 183 Kan. 19, 23, 325 P.2d 382, 386 (“It may be said without equivocation that the raising of canary birds is similar to the raising of chickens, or other poultry, which is commonly regarded as an agricultural pursuit.”); Carp v. Board of County Comm’rs, 190 Kan. 177, 179, 373 P.2d 153, 155 (raising 2,500 hogs annually in $25,000 hog house — “We shall have to agree with Dr. Aubel of Kansas State that in Kansas, agriculture includes animal husbandry — the raising and feeding of livestock.”); Mentor Lagoons, Inc. v. Zoning Board of Appeals, 168 Ohio St. 113, 151 N.E.2d 533 (horse raising—within exemption for “agriculture”); Fidler v. Zoning Board of Adjustment, 408 Pa. 260, 182 A.2d 692 (raising large numbers of turkeys off the ground and growing only enough *462feed for a small fraction of them — within exemption for “agriculture”). In the Fid-ler case the court said:
Likewise, the fact that only a relatively small quantity of the necessary feed will be cultivated on the property is not conclusive. If this concept were correct, an ordinary dairy farm would be precluded if it purchased the necessary needs of the stock from outside sources. (408 Pa. at 266, 182 A.2d at 695.)
Cf. Moulton v. Building Inspector, 312 Mass. 195, 43 N.E.2d 662 (silo within exemption for “agricultural use” though no silage produced on premises).
Regarding a cattle feed lot, the court said this in Fields v. Anderson Cattle Co., 193 Kan. 558, 563-565, 396 P.2d 276, 280-281:
In its commonly accepted sense the term “agriculture” includes the breeding, rearing and feeding of livestock in preparation for market. * * *
Whether the owner of livestock fattens his cattle for market in the blue stem pastures of the Flint Hills or in feed lots where they are given more condensed rations, the preparation for market continues as an agricultural pursuit.
We must conclude that the feeding of livestock for market is an agricultural pursuit and that the structures used in connection therewith are for agricultural purposes.
Our Iowa exemption goes beyond “farm” buildings and is not restricted to “farm” uses. It begins by providing that the zoning chapter shall not apply “to land, farm houses, farm barns, farm outbuildings”— but it does not stop there. The exemption adds “or other buildings, structures, or erections * * *.” Moreover, the exemption does not require that those improvements be used for farming purposes or even that they be on a farm. They are exempt if used “for agricultural purposes”. (Italics added.) The sole purpose of the two buildings in question will be to raise poultry. Under the definitions and decisions of the term “agriculture,” those two structures will be “buildings * * * for use for agricultural purposes” and thus within the exemption.
Defendants’ contentions cannot withstand analysis. Defendants argue that the buildings are essentially commercial, not agricultural. But at this day “agricultural” and “commercial” cannot be divorced. Today’s agriculture in Iowa is commercial. Today’s farmer is essentially a businessman, often a very substantial one, engaged in a commercial enterprise. If poultry and egg production has taken on a commercial countenance, it is because agriculture has taken on that countenance.
Defendants seem to think that a chicken house, to be for an agricultural purpose, must be a small unheated structure housing a couple hundred hens, of the kind which was common in past years. But agriculture does not stand still, nor does the content of the term “agriculture”. Needham v. Winslow Nurseries, Inc., 330 Mass. 95, 111 N.E.2d 453. Profit margins in agriculture have become so thin that innovation, mechanization, efficiency, and, often, bigness are essential to survival. Animal husbandry practices with cattle, hogs, and poultry are strikingly different from those of a generation ago. But changes in practices do not mean that the new animal husbandry is not agriculture. Nor is the size of the flock or herd determinative in a given case. Animal husbandry does not cease to be agriculture because the cattleman, hog man, or poultryman expands his operation to a point at which a profit can be realized.
Defendants seem to concede that mechanized poultry houses like these would be exempt from setback regulations if the poultryman also tilled some soil. But from a zoning standpoint, what difference can there be between poultry houses less than 200 feet from the highway when the poul-*463tryman does not till the soil and identical poultry houses when the poultryman does till the soil? Defendants’ basic difficulty here is that they are thinking in terms of “farming” rather than “agriculture”.
Reliance is placed on Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb, 337 U.S. 755, 69 S.Ct. 1274, 93 L.Ed. 1672. All that case holds is that under the Fair Labor Standards Act, a separate enterprise which is not itself agricultural does not become agricultural by serving agriculture — in that case an irrigation ditch company which was not itself engaged either in land tillage or animal husbandry The United States Supreme Court has, however, given a very broad application to the word “agriculture” under FLSA. Maneja v. Waialua Agricultural Co., 349 U.S. 254, 75 S.Ct. 719, 99 L.Ed. 1040. See also NLRB v. Strain Poultry Farms, Inc., 405 F.2d 1025 (5th Cir.).
Defendants’ contentions really amount to policy considerations for the legislature. If that body believes modern mechanized livestock structures require special provisions, it can so provide. That is not for us to do even if we dislike big chicken houses. Our function is to give effect to the statutory words as they stand. Needham v. Winslow Nurseries, Inc., 330 Mass. 95, 99, 111 N.E.2d 453, 456 (“They are to be interpreted according to the common and approved usage of the language without enlargement or restriction.”).
The first stage with poultry is the incubation stage in a hatchery plant; the last is the slaughtering stage in a processing plant. Between those stages poultrymen husband the chickens, raising them and keeping them for laying and breeding. That middle stage is clearly agricultural, and the buildings which house the poultry during that stage constitute structures “for use for agricultural purposes”.
Finally, the question in exemption cases is not what a board of supervisors say a particular use is. The question is what the use really is, under the law. If under the law a use is agricultural, the statute grants exemption. If a board of supervisors could obviate the agricultural exemption by the simple expedient of declaring an area suburban residential or similarly characterizing it, they could annul the statutory exemption by their own act.
The judgment should be reversed.