As promised by Democrat President Joe Biden’s outgoing unelected “climate czar” John Kerry, bureaucrats have begun cracking down on farmers and shutting down small American farms.

In Oregon, farmers have come under attack from water conservation and groundwater protection regulations that make it impossible for them to operate.

This comes after Kerry made a pact with several foreign nations to crack down on the American farming industry.

As Slay News reported last year, Kerry signed America into an agreement with twelve other nations to fight “global warming” by crippling the agriculture industry.

International governments have agreed to sign a pact pledging to target food production by shutting down farms to reduce “methane emissions.”

The thirteen nations signing the Global Methane Pledge are:

Argentina
Australia
Brazil
Burkina Faso
Chile
Czech Republic
Ecuador
Germany
Panama
Peru
Spain
The United States
Uruguay

The move seeks to drastically cut meat and dairy supply around the world to allegedly “save the planet” from “climate change.”

The U.S., Australia, Brazil, and Argentina, nations that are signing the pact, are among the world’s largest producers of meat.

According to a new report, bureaucrats in Oregon are now erroneously dubbing small family farms as concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs.

By labeling the farms as CAFOs, state officials can shut them down “for the environment.”

“The state of Oregon has effectively shut down small farms and market gardens on a large scale, and they’re actually sending out cease-and-desist letters to farms and they’re using satellite technology to find their victims and send them these letters that say you can’t operate,” an Oregon rancher explains.

The rancher explains that there are two different laws that Oregon officials are using to conduct these shutdowns.

One involves the state of Oregon’s broadly vague definition of a CAFO, which reads, in part, as follows:

“The State of Oregon defines CAFOs as the concentrated feeding or holding of animals or poultry, including but not limited to horse, cattle, sheep, or swine feeding areas, dairy confinement areas, and poultry and egg production facilities where the surface has been prepared with concrete, rock or fibrous material to support animals in wet weather.”

Based on this definition, a few-acre homestead with pasture and, say, two milking cows and some chickens qualifies as a CAFO if it has any area on the property where rock or gravel is used as a pathway to get to a small barn or coop, accoridn to Natural News.

“The way that they have redefined CAFOs is going to impact nearly everybody,” the rancher warns about Oregon’s “updated” CAFO definition, which impacts his property as well.

“Even on our property, we don’t have animals that are necessarily contained in one area (they’re roaming on pastures).”

WATCH:

Back in January of this year, a lawsuit was filed on behalf of small family farms throughout Oregon, arguing that the definition of a CAFO is too broad and negatively impacts pretty much anyone who produces eggs from backyard chickens, no matter the size of their property.

The case was recently covered by National Review, explaining that Oregon’s government “joined forces” with the large-scale dairy industry to oppress and tyrannize Oregon’s small farmers.

“This law is being enforced in the state of Oregon,” the rancher warns, telling the same story as National Review about Godspeed Hollow Farm in Newburg, Ore., which has been reclassified as a CAFO simply because it has a gravel pathway from the milking machine to the pickup station just 100 feet in distance.

“[Oregon] has already shut down some farms.

“There is an injunction on some of the definition of the law until it can be heard in court.

“Currently, small dairy farmers … a lot of what they’re requiring is simply too much for the small farmer.”

Additionally, Oregon farmers are having to deal with the state’s rules on water.

Farmers are only legally allowed to collect rainwater in Oregon.

All other sources, including water from rivers and streams, and even groundwater on private property, are considered a public resource.

Because of this rule, Oregon farmers are not even allowed to use water from their own private wells to irrigate their crops and hydrate their animals without a permit.

Coupled with the CAFO rule, this one concerning water use is being abused in such a way as to make it prohibitive, if not impossible, for farmers to run their farms.

“This rule went into place back in 2021,” the rancher explains about how Oregon officials enacted the water rule.

“It has slowly rolled out to the point where market gardeners on a half-acre of land are now receiving cease-and-desist orders saying, ‘you can’t water your gardens; figure out another way.'”

As Slay News previously reported, Kerry insists that farmers must slash food production to meet the “Net Zero” goals of the globalist green agenda.

Kerry issued the warning during a green agenda conference in Washington D.C. last May.

During the Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) AIM for Climate Summit, Kerry told the audience that “we can’t get to Net Zero, we won’t get this job done, unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution.”

Kerry warned attendees that his and other world leaders’ “lives depend” on farmers ceasing their operations.

Stopping farmers from growing food will lower agriculture “emissions,” Kerry insists.

He continued by noting that he does not even call it climate change anymore.

“It’s not change; it’s a crisis,” he declared.

The news comes as unelected bureaucratic organizations, including the World Economic Forum (WEF), United Nations (UN), and World Health Organization (WHO), push their radical green agenda onto sovereign nations.

As we’ve seen repeatedly, “saving the planet” involves stripping the taxpaying public of their rights and slashing their quality of life by pushing false claims of an alleged “climate emergency.”

READ MORE – WEF Pushes Ban on Home-Grown Food to ‘Fight Climate Change’

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