Nine Midwestern states ban non-family owned corporations from owning farms or engaging in farming
We turned to the work of activists in nine Midwestern states, who took a different approach, by banning non-family owned corporations from owning farms or engaging in farming. Those laws, know loosely as "anti-corporate farming laws", take aim at the whole host of harms that are caused when four corporations concentrate their control of the agricultural industry... those state laws have been upheld by state and federal courts, including the US Supreme Court. Using them as a model, we drafted municipal ordinances incorporating the approach, and those ordinances have now been adopted by ten municipal governments in five counties in Pennsylvania.
Source: Linzey, Thomas, Esq., Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, April 2003