Calling it a “Biden-style government takeover,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins is promising to help a New Jersey family trying to save their 175-year-old farm from being seized by a local government to build “affordable housing” units.
The secretary also said the days of other family farm seizures across the country would soon be coming to an end.
Earlier this year, according to family member Andy Henry, the Cranbury, New Jersey, township government sent him a letter stating he could either accept an offer to buy the farm or it would be taken by eminent domain.
“My family sacrificed on this land for 175 years,” Henry told the Farm Journal’s AgWeb. “All the other farms disappeared. We did not. We will not.”
The U.S. Constitution empowers eminent domain to take property for the public good, but its application has been improperly expanded, say critics, to include seizures that benefit government through increased taxes
As farms have given way to warehouses and light industrial development in the area, Henry says he has declined multimillion-dollar offers for the 21 acres. He remains a lone holdout in the area as a working farm, located about 15 northeast of Trenton.
He told AgWeb that he inherited the farm in 2012 along with his brother, Christopher. They have invested $200,000 in upkeep, he said, adding that they have turned down offers as high as “$20-30 million” from private developers.
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Henry told the farm publication:
Didn’t matter how much money we were offered. We saved the farm no matter what. We turned down all the offers to preserve the legacy for our family, city, and even state. Our farm in now leased for raising cattle and sheep. The town loves driving by and seeing something besides warehouses. Keeping this legacy intact and passing it to the next generation has been, and is always, our plan.
A township committee officially approved a plan to take the farm last month. Timothy P. Duggan, an eminent domain attorney representing the family called the move “misguided and rushed.”
A state mandate is requiring the township, with a population of only 4,000, to build 265 affordable housing units over the next decade, AgWeb reported.
In her X announcement, Secretary Rollins said an upcoming policy change could end such takeovers of family farms. She said her department was exploring legal options to help the Henry family fight the township.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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