Chambersburg - Windham Township, Bradford County Supervisors have voted unanimously to become the tenth Township in Pennsylvania to adopt an Ordinance banning agribusiness corporations from operating in the Township.
The Township - the first in Bradford County to adopt the Ordinance - joins nine other Township governments in Indiana, Cumberland, Fulton, and Bedford Counties that have adopted the Ordinance.
Specifically, the Ordinance prohibits agribusiness corporations from owning farmland or engaging in farming in the Township.
Windham Township is located within the Senatorial District of Roger Madigan. Senator Madigan is the primary sponsor of Senate Bill 826, which seeks to strip the power away from Township governments to adopt Ordinances to control factory farms and the corporations that run them. The Bill stalled in the Senate Agriculture Committee after thousands of citizens and Township Supervisors announced their opposition to the Bill.
The adoption of the Ordinance by Supervisors in Windham Township reflects the targeting of rural Townships in South-Central and North-Central Pennsylvania by factory farm corporations. Statistics produced by the State Conservation Commission in 2001 revealed that those two regions - comprising 29 Pennsylvania counties - endure over 93% of all factory farms in Pennsylvania. Those statistics also revealed that over 94% of new factory farms were slated to be developed in those areas in the near future.
Tom Linzey, staff attorney for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund - which drafted the Ordinance - explained that "the failure of the legislature to take steps to protect citizens of this State from factory farms and the corporations that run them has led directly to local governments working to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their residents. Just because factory farm corporations now call the shots in the House and Senate Agricultural Committees doesn't mean that local democracies have sold out too."
Linzey noted that the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau and factory farm corporations are leading the charge to strike down the Ordinance as it was adopted in Belfast Township, Fulton County. Linzey stated that "this is typical behavior for an organization - the State Farm Bureau - which no longer represents the interests of family farmers.":
