Mississippi Court Protects Farmers' Deer Cannon Use

The Supreme Court of Mississippi ruled in May 2021 that the state’s Right to Farm Act protected farmers’ use of cannons to scare deer away from fields where the farms had been in operation for more than one year. The case demonstrates, yet again, the usefulness of a Right to Farm statute to preserve agriculture in rural parts of the country.

In Briggs v. Hughes, two farmers used propane cannons to deter deer from eating their cotton and soybean fields. Neighboring property owners filed a lawsuit to prevent the farmers from using those cannons, alleging the loud noises were a nuisance. The neighbors agreed that the farms had been in operation for many years, but contended that the real question was how long the farmers had been using the cannons. The Court disagreed, explaining the Mississippi Right to Farm Act applied to farms—not specific farming techniques—that had been in existence for at least a year. Since the farms had been in operation for more than one year, and the cannons were part of the farms’ best agricultural management practices, the Right to Farm Act blocked the neighbor's’ nuisance lawsuits. The Court reasoned that under the neighbors’ view, the one-year statutory period would restart every time an existing farm started using a new piece of equipment. That is not what the Mississippi Legislature intended.

The neighbors’ unconvincing argument failed because the legislative intent behind the Right to Farm Act showed a clear goal of protecting existing farms from nuisance actions based on use of new farming equipment, devices, chemicals, materials, technology, and structures, as long as that use accords with best management practices. Specifically, the Mississippi legislature amended the Act in 2009 to remove a requirement that the “conditions or circumstances alleged to constitute a nuisance [must] have existed substantially unchanged since the established date of operation.” Now, the Act protects a farm if the operation is “in compliance with all applicable state and federal permits.” Most Right to Farm statutes are put in place to protect and preserve agricultural land uses while allowing those farms to adopt new technologies and farming methods. Mississippi is no different.

The Mississippi Court also made an interesting note of what the case was not about—the hypothetical change from a cotton field to a hog farm. The Court refused to the take the bait since those were not the facts of the case. Here in Indiana, such a conversion would be protected under the Indiana Right to Farm Act. In Mississippi, the question remains unanswered.