Property Rights and Agriculture

From: WT
Sent: Thu 2/23/2017 12:40 PM
To: walter block
Subject: Question on Property Rights and Agriculture. Hello Dr. Block, I am mailing you in hopes to answer a moral question that I need ironed out in my own personal philosophy. The issue is in regards to CAFO’s (confined animal feeding operations) and property rights pertaining to them. I am an An-Cap in my early 30’s who lives on an acreage in rural NW Iowa. 6 months ago a neighbor who is a farmer built two hog cafo’s a 1/4 mile SW from my property. One of the prominent wind directions in the region. I am writing to you in particular because much of my understanding of property rights in a free market come from your writings, particularly your book on free market environmentalism. This scenario has many similarities to pollution cases in your book in so far as the farmer’s new hog operations have negative externalities that his neighbors must bear: terrible smell, the noise, large populations of flies, higher rates of COPD, risks of water contamination thru manure spill, etc. In a free market I believe that the surrounding property owners would have legal recourse, of which we have none in this reality of ours. The final decider on legality is what they call the “master matrix”. A set of guidelines that the state/DNR decided on with input from the agriculture legal defense council more than a decade ago. The CAFO bubble in rural America has coincided perfectly with the tech, housing and current bubble that we are in. So much so that they are an indicator. Cafos are very expensive to construct and have only been feasible with the absurdly low interests rates of the past 2 decades. And their construction is reaching a fever pitch in the area now. With grains prices being so low and my generation (the new lost generation) all coming home to farm with their families, many farmers are looking to diversify. Plights like mine are now common place and will only increase until all of this insanity stops. All of rural America is a debt fueled tinderbox. Am I being wrong headed in my opinion on this? Are my property rights and those of my other neighbors being violated? I am struggling not to let anger cloud my judgement on the issue. I was hoping that you could point me in the direction of an Austrian take on this phenomenon, be it an article or book. I would like to have some mental ammunition to read and possibly distribute to other unhappy neighbors. Thank you very much for your time and congrats on your 500 articles! Cheers! WT

Dear WT: Thanks for your kind comment about my “book on free market environmentalism”: Block, Walter E. Ed. Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990, http://mises.org/story/2120; http://www.mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf;
https://mises.org/library/law-property-rights-and-air-pollution-0

But the main reason this book is so good is because it contains in it THE BEST essay on environmentalism ever written (along with a few other pretty good articles on this subject if I may say so):

Rothbard, Murray N. 1982. “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution,” Cato Journal, Vol. 2, No. 1, Spring; reprinted in Block, Walter E. Ed. Economics and the Environment: A Reconciliation, Vancouver: The Fraser Institute, 1990, pp. 233-279; http://mises.org/story/2120; http://www.mises.org/rothbard/lawproperty.pdf;
https://mises.org/library/law-property-rights-and-air-pollution-0

In my view, which, I presume, is in accord with Murray’s, there are no “negative externalities” here. That is just mainstream clap-trap. Rather, this is here a rather clear case of property rights violations, emanating from trespassing smells. I assume you were there before the pig farm started up. Hopefully, if you launch a law-suit against these people, you can rely on the Rothbardian analysis.

The Best of Walter E. Block