Rogue raisin farmer Marvin Horne owes the U.S. government hundreds of dollars in unpaid fines-and millions of pounds of raisins.
Mr. Horne and his wife have been drying grapes in Fresno, Calif., since 1969. In 2002, the couple began intentionally violating a federal law that enables the Agriculture Department to enforce the seizure of a portion of every California raisin farmer’s annual crop, in certain years as much as 47 percent, without a right to compensation, and in some years with no compensation at all.
The intent of the New Deal-era law was to prevent a raisin glut and to use the generated revenues to benefit farmers, often by paying for some raisin promoting ad campaigns overseas.
In response to a USDA administrative enforcement proceeding against him, Mr. Horne and members of his family filed a lawsuit to claim that government seizure of farmers’ raisins without compensation is unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.
The law is one of 27 marketing orders that originated with the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937, which aimed to boost farmers’ marketplace power by collectively stabilizing prices for the benefits of producers and consumers. These laws are relics of a long gone era, when farms were smaller and more numerous than they are today.
We’re glad Mr. Horne will get a chance to have his case heard on its merits, but whatever the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit decides, Congress should reconsider the wisdom of this price-inflating law.
Editorial, Pages 74 on 07/21/2013