Missouri family forced to destroy their home garden thanks to new city ordinance... no citizen shall be allowed to grow their own food!

Friday, April 08, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: city ordinance, family garden, food security

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(NaturalNews) More and more, our elected leaders have taken it upon themselves to abuse our trust, abuse our rights and do whatever they can to ensure that we remain wedded to "the system" – one that they control, of course. Long gone are the days when our founding fathers valued the attributes of individuality and self-sufficiency, as another example of this – from Missouri – demonstrates.

In Sugar Creek (Pop. 3,345 according to the 2010 Census), it is now illegal to grow food on your own property, and if you try, not only will you be required to destroy your garden, but you will be subjected to fines and, no doubt eventually, jail.

As reported by KSHB in Kansas City, Sugar Creek city councilmen passed an ordinance a few days ago making it illegal to grow a vegetable garden in the front yard of homes. One resident, Nathan Athans, who prides himself in being able to provide food security for his family, believes the new ordinance is aimed at him.

As the local news team reported, Athans grows a number of different vegetables on his front lawn and spends a great deal of time caring for his garden and working to improve its bounty.

"I'd probably say about 300 hours [so far this year], I spend all my free time out here," he told the local news crew.

"We paid our citation"

Again, a big part of the reason he spends so much time there is because he's trying to care for his family. "I want [them] to know where their food is coming from," he told the news crew. "I don't want to have to go to the grocery store and worry about what was done to that food."

But nosy neighbors and authoritarian city officials don't share his view or enthusiasm. Last summer, the city cited Athans for weeds in his garden, but he said he complied with the order to remove them.

"We did it, completely weed-free, we paid our citation," he said.

A city official, Paul Loving, disagreed, however.

"I don't know that there would have been a problem with them had the gardens been well kept, they weren't," he said, referencing the new ordinance which says that food vegetation cannot be within 30 feet of a city street.

Athans said he can't grow his garden in the backyard because it is heavily shaded and only gets about two hours' worth of sunlight a day, even during the long, dog days of summer, in certain areas.

Loving claims that the city was receiving too many complaints about the Athans garden, so officials decided the ordinance was the only way to deal with them (rather than, say, telling butt-inski neighbors that the property belongs to the Athans, their taxes and fees for the property are not delinquent and they're not hurting anyone by growing food).

Who's being 'unreasonable'?

"Because I want my yard a certain way doesn't mean the neighborhood has to keep his yard the same way, but I do have an expectation that we'll all be reasonable in what we put in our front yards," Loving said.

Guess the city doesn't have to be "reasonable," though.

Meanwhile, others are finding ways to turn their small tracts of land into food production zones, as reported by Homesteading.news. The site notes that every bit of space can be used in some way to grow food, due to advancing technologies like the Mini-Farm Grow Box from Food Rising, developed by Natural News editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and also breakthroughs in planting techniques.

Also, the site notes that increasingly, in small communities, suburbs and even larger cities, so-called "community food plots" are on the rise as citizens transform unused lots and other plots of land into useful agricultural space.

Sources:

KSHB.com

HomeSteading.news

FoodRising.org