Stop Agricultural Lawfare

ISSUE:

Food, fuel, and fiber supplies are crucial to our national security. Federal agencies and state agencies, along with NGO partners, have had property owners, farmers, and ranchers, under attack for decades in an effort to seize control of their land & water under the guise of “sustainability and conservation”. 

American Agri-Women Request:

Expand the Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework Initiative further and advance into law protections from the continuous lawsuits. The practices of “sue and settle” – lawsuit after lawsuit have to end.

Background:

Food security is national security. We need our agricultural, energy, and mining industries to be protected for the overall security of the United States and to ensure we have sovereignty.

The following are current examples to support the need for reform (Sources listed and shared from The Cowboy Site):

1. Wayne Hage – Nevada

Margaret Byfield and her family buy a ranch in central Nevada. It is a combination of private land and federal grazing allotments — the same arrangement that has allowed ranching families to operate across the American West for over a century. They work the land. They build the fences. They manage the water. They raise the cattle.

Then the lawsuits began.

The story of how environmental litigation became a primary weapon against American ranching is one of the most consequential and least-covered stories in rural America. It does not happen in a single dramatic moment. It happens the way water erodes stone — slowly, persistently, until the ground beneath a ranching family's feet simply gives way.

The mechanism is called "sue and settle." An environmental organization files a lawsuit against a federal agency — the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service — alleging that the agency has failed to protect a species, a watershed, or a habitat.

The agency, rather than fighting the lawsuit through the courts at public expense, negotiates a settlement. The settlement contains new restrictions. Grazing allotments are reduced. Water access is limited. Land that a ranching family has worked for generations becomes inaccessible by legal decree, and no rancher was ever a party to the proceedings.

The family finds out when the paperwork arrives.

Margaret Byfield eventually became the executive director of American Stewards of Liberty, an organization dedicated to fighting what she calls federal and state land grabs executed through environmental law. She testified before Congress about what she watched happen to her family and to families like hers across the West. Her testimony described something that most Americans outside of ranch country do not understand: that environmental organizations receive millions of dollars in federal funding each year, that they use that funding to file lawsuits against the same federal agencies that fund them, that settlements reached behind closed doors reshape land use policy for entire regions, and that the ranching families most directly affected have no seat at the table.

The congressional hearing that received Byfield's testimony was convened by the House Oversight Committee in 2026, examining how burdensome regulations have harmed farmers and ranchers. It was not a small hearing. Multiple witnesses testified about overlapping networks of environmental groups, government agencies, and universities that Byfield described as "a closed loop of influence that drives policy, messaging, and enforcement."

The World Wildlife Fund has explicitly stated that cattle are destroying the planet. The Nature Conservancy has partnered with agricultural trade associations to shape policy from the inside. These are not fringe positions. They are the public positions of organizations with budgets larger than most state agriculture departments.

On February 11, 2026, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins stood before cameras in Washington flanked by country music artist John Rich, HUD Secretary Scott Turner, Representative James Comer, and several farming families who had personally been targets of what the USDA now calls "agricultural lawfare." She announced the Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework — a formal initiative to defend agricultural producers from politically motivated legal action targeting their operations and their land.

The framing of the announcement was deliberate. This was not a regulatory adjustment or a quiet policy memo. It was a declaration. The United States was built by people who work the land, Rollins said, and the ability to work, protect, and own that land is the American dream made tangible.

The response from ranching communities was immediate and emotional. Not because they were naive about the political theater involved in a Washington press conference. But because for many of them, it was the first time in a long time that someone in a position of federal authority had named what was happening to them and called it by its right name.

They had watched their grazing allotments shrink through paperwork. They had watched their water rights challenged by organizations that had never set foot on their land. They had watched neighbors who had ranched for four generations walk away not because they failed at ranching, but because they could not afford to fight a lawsuit filed by an organization with a legal team, a communications department, and a federal grant.

The scale of what has been lost is difficult to quantify. Ranching operations are not factories that can be restarted. A breeding herd takes years to build. Grazing land that goes unworked does not simply wait for the rancher to return — it changes. Invasive species move in. Fire fuel loads build up. Water infrastructure falls apart. The land that a family managed as a working ecosystem for generations reverts to something that serves neither ranching nor the wildlife the lawsuits claimed to protect.

The House Oversight hearing documented this pattern across multiple states. Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Oregon — the same story repeated with different names, different agencies, different organizations, and the same outcome. A ranching family that built something over generations loses it to a process they cannot access, cannot afford to fight, and were never invited to participate in.

The Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework is a start. It does not restore what has already been lost. It does not unwind decades of sue-and-settle agreements that have already reshaped land use across the West. It does not return the allotments that were quietly removed while ranching families were busy working.

What it does is put a name on a practice that has operated largely in the shadows of administrative law. It signals, at least at the federal level, that the next lawsuit filed against a ranching family for using land their family has worked for a century may face a different kind of opponent than a tired family alone with a stack of legal bills.

Whether that signal translates into durable protection is the question that ranching communities across the West are watching very carefully.

Margaret Byfield bought that Nevada ranch in 1978. She is still fighting for it.

Sources:

USDA Press Release — "USDA Announces Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework to End Agricultural Lawfare," February 11, 2026

House Oversight Committee — "Wrap Up: Burdensome Regulations Harm Farmers and Ranchers," April 2026

American Stewards of Liberty congressional testimony, 2026

2. Cory Garrett – Caroline County, Virginia

Caroline County, Virginia. May 2024. A letter arrived from the county government. They had made Cory Garrett an offer for 11 acres of his farm along the Rappahannock River.

The offer was $78,400. He had one week to decide.

Cory Garrett is 40 years old. He grows corn, soybeans, and wheat in the Tidewater Trail area of Caroline County, Virginia, roughly 90 miles south of Washington, D.C. He farms alongside his wife, Rebekah, and their two small daughters. The land on the Rappahannock River that the county now wanted to take had been in his family for five generations. His grandfather sharecropped that field. Garrett worked it himself for the first time at age 12, alone on a tractor, the river just beyond the tree line.

He bought the 143 acres in 2020 from his aging aunt so the land would stay in the family. He and Rebekah sacrificed to come up with the money. At age 15, Garrett had started his first hay-and-straw operation. By the time he bought the family ground, farming was not just what he did — it was what he was. The river bottom field he bought is pivot irrigated and consistently produces among the highest crop yields across all his ground.

In 2022, he signed a conservation easement with the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, permanently ensuring the land could never be subdivided. Then, on June 18, 2024, the Caroline County Board of Supervisors voted.

Six to zero. Unanimous. They authorized the use of eminent domain to seize 11 of Garrett's river bottom acres and build a 14-million-gallon-per-day water intake facility on the bank of the Rappahannock. From there, a 35-mile underground pipeline would carry the water across the county to serve future residential, commercial, and industrial development — including data centers — in the Ladysmith and Carmel Church areas.

The plan had been in development for 20 years. Not a single permit had been obtained. No funding had been secured. No engineering plans existed. No drawings. No right-of-way surveys. The county administrator had admitted at a public hearing in October 2023 that the project was "seven years away" minimum — and could be delayed 20 to 30 years if development didn't materialize.

The county offered $78,400 for the most productive riverfront farmland in the region. When Garrett refused, they voted to take it anyway. July 22, 2024: The county filed a Certificate of Take. July 23: They filed a petition to condemn the property.

Garrett hired attorney Joshua Baker from Waldo and Lyle, the only law firm in Virginia exclusively representing property owners in eminent domain matters. Baker filed a motion in Caroline County Circuit Court on August 28 to invalidate the Certificate of Take and dismiss the condemnation petition entirely.

The motion made a specific argument: Caroline County did not have a qualifying public project for which the power of eminent domain could legally be exercised. What they had was a speculative concept — 20 years of failed permitting, no approvals, no engineering, no funding, and no timeline. Under Virginia law, condemning land requires an actual project. Not a plan. Not an intention. A project.

The motion also pointed out something the county had not disclosed to the public: the primary purpose of the water project was not residential. Up to 4.63 million gallons per day would go toward cooling industrial and commercial facilities.” They comprehend absolutely nothing about farming," Garrett said, "but pretend to know all."

What the county also never explained to the public was what this facility would do to the river itself. The Rappahannock is tidal at the point where Garrett's land sits. The entire tidal freshwater balance depends on consistent inflow from upstream. Remove 14 million gallons per day and push it into the Mattaponi watershed, and the salinity levels at the intake point will rise. Rising salinity in irrigation water kills crops. The farms downstream would lose their ability to irrigate from the river entirely.

Garrett said it clearly: "Once they get a permit and start using the water, they'll just go back and ask for more. At some point, our watershed will reach a breaking point."

Dozens of county residents stood up at the June public hearing and spoke against the plan. Environmentalists raised concerns about cross-watershed water transfer and river ecology. Not a single resident spoke in favor. The board voted 6-0 anyway.

As of the latest reporting, the Rappahannock Tribe has filed a separate legal challenge. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has not finalized its permit. The Garretts' motion to dismiss is still pending in court. No date has been set. The land is still in Garrett's name. For now. His daughter rides in the tractor with him on that field. She asks him: "Daddy, is that Pop-Pop's corn? Is that your beans?" She is three years old. She already loves the land. Cory Garrett said he will go to his grave believing this was wrong.

"I'm not aggressively going after the county," he said. "I'm like: Whoa. Stop. No. This fight has been brought in this direction and I'm not backing down." Five generations built something on the Rappahannock. The county voted in one night to take it for a project that doesn't have a single permit, a single engineering plan, or a single guaranteed dollar of funding.

Sources:

AgWeb, Dec. 17, 2024

Fredericksburg Free Press, Sep. 8, 2024

The Daily Progress, Sep. 11, 2024

Bay Journal, Feb. 9, 2026

3. Maude Family – Pennington County, South Dakota

South Dakota. Some years ago. The Maude family notices a problem with a fence line.

It is the kind of problem that happens in ranching country all the time. Land boundaries in the American West are complex. Survey lines run through terrain that was not drawn with ranching in mind. Allotments abut private land. Fences shift. Cattle don't read property surveys. Disputes about where exactly a line falls happen between neighbors, between families, between generations.

The Maude family — Heather and Charles — ran a small cattle and hog operation in South Dakota for generations. They had been working the same ground their family had worked before them. The dispute that would eventually consume years of their lives began over approximately 25 acres of land near federal grasslands.

The exact location of the boundary was in question. The Maudes believed the land was theirs or that their use of it was consistent with longstanding practice. The federal government reached a different conclusion. What happened next was not a civil land dispute resolved through survey, negotiation, and adjustment. What happened next was a federal criminal investigation.

The prior administration charged the Maude family with felony theft of government property. The theory was that by grazing cattle on the disputed 25 acres, they had stolen federal resources — forage, specifically — from the federal government. A civil land boundary disagreement over a quarter section of South Dakota grassland became a criminal prosecution carrying potential prison sentences, fines, and the forfeiture of their home and the operation their family had built. Federal prosecutors pursued the case.

The Maudes fought it. U.S. Senator Mike Rounds and Congressman Dusty Johnson got involved on behalf of the family. South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley testified before the House Oversight Committee in 2026 about the case as an example of federal overreach in agricultural enforcement. Jackley described congressional involvement as "a major turning point for the Maudes." Without that external pressure, the outcome might have looked very different.

In 2025, the Trump administration dropped the charges. The DOJ and USDA described the prosecution as an overzealous, politically motivated case over what should have been handled as a simple civil matter. The criminal charges against Heather and Charles Maude were dismissed.

They did not receive back the years of stress, legal fees, and uncertainty that the prosecution produced. They did not receive compensation for the weight of knowing that the operation their family built over generations was subject to federal forfeiture over a fence line. The dropped charges did not undo what the charges had done.

Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins invited the Maude family to Washington in February 2026 to participate in the announcement of the Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework — the USDA's formal initiative against what it now calls agricultural lawfare. The Maudes sat in the room while Rollins named their case as one of the examples that made the framework necessary.

At the House Oversight Committee roundtable titled "Farming on Trial: A Roundtable on the Growing Use of Lawfare Against American Agriculture," Jackley put the core question directly. He described the Maude case as emblematic of what happens when the machinery of federal prosecution is pointed at rural families over disputes that should never have left the administrative process. "Many farmers and ranchers just want a fair playing field," he told the committee. "There's oftentimes government overreach making it more challenging to produce that product."

Twenty-five acres. A fence line. A generational cattle and hog operation. Felony charges.

The most important detail in this story is not that the charges were dropped. It is that they were filed in the first place — by the federal government, against a farm family, over a boundary dispute, using criminal law designed for actual theft.

Sources:

CPAC — "How the USDA Is Taking a Stand: Protecting Ranchers from Government Overreach," February 18, 2026

USDA Press Release — "USDA Announces Farmer and Rancher Freedom Framework to End Agricultural Lawfare," February 11, 2026

House Oversight Committee — "Wrap Up: Burdensome Regulations Harm Farmers and Ranchers," April 2026

Daily Caller — Secretary Rollins op-ed on agricultural lawfare, February 20, 2026

4. Dwight & Stephen Hammond – Harney County, Oregon

Harney County, Oregon. January 2, 2016. Armed protestors occupy the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The occupation lasts 41 days. It makes national news. Politicians and commentators argue about it for months.

But the story that put those men in that building begins years earlier and several miles away, on a working cattle ranch near Steens Mountain, where a ranching family set fire to their own land.

The Hammond family — Dwight Hammond and his son Steven — are cattle ranchers in the high desert of southeast Oregon. They have grazed federal allotments near their private property for decades, as ranching families in this region have done since before most current federal agencies existed. In 2001, they set a controlled burn on their private land. The fire spread onto adjacent federal land, burning 139 acres. In 2006, Steven Hammond set another fire on federal land, this time to reduce invasive plants and protect the family's winter feed supply from approaching wildfire. That fire burned 1 acre.

For those fires, both men were charged under the federal Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 — a statute written in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing to address acts of domestic terrorism. The jury convicted them. The original judge sentenced Dwight to 3 months in prison and Steven to 1 year, calling a longer sentence "grossly disproportionate" to what they had done. Federal prosecutors appealed. The 9th Circuit ruled that the mandatory minimum sentence under the terrorism statute applied and that the original sentences were illegal. Both men returned to prison. Dwight served nearly three years total. Steven served nearly four.

The moment that should be impossible but is documented: a family that set fires on their own land and on 140 acres of adjacent federal land — fires that happen routinely across the West as standard land management practice — was prosecuted under the same federal statute used to address domestic terrorism.

The 2016 Malheur occupation was, at its core, a protest against those convictions. The occupiers — led by Ammon Bundy and others unaffiliated with the Hammond family — demanded the Hammonds' release and their return to their ranch. The Hammonds themselves did not ask for the occupation and publicly stated they did not support it. They returned to prison while the occupation played out on television.

Donald Trump pardoned both men in July 2018, clearing their convictions. The following year, the administration restored their federal grazing permits. Then a federal judge rejected that restoration. Then, in January 2021, outgoing Interior Secretary David Bernhardt reinstated the permits in his final days in office. Then the Biden administration rescinded the permits a month after taking office.

In February 2026, the Bureau of Land Management announced it was again proposing to open the federal allotments near Steens Mountain to new 10-year grazing permits — potentially restoring what the Hammond family has been trying to reclaim for the better part of a decade. Two environmental nonprofits immediately filed formal protests. They argue that reopening the land for grazing would undo years of ecological recovery.

Dwight Hammond told reporters his family would likely submit a permit application. He said the family has been unable to use even their private lands effectively because those lands are surrounded by federal allotments and there are no fences separating them.

The fire that started this burned 140 acres of federal land and 1 acre of federal land, in two separate incidents, over five years, on a working ranch in the high desert of Oregon. The legal response consumed nearly a decade of two men's lives, produced a standoff that made international news, and is still producing court filings in 2026.

The grazing allotments near Steens Mountain are not yet restored. The protests are in. The review continues. The Hammonds are still waiting.

Sources:

Oregon Public Broadcasting — "Bureau of Land Management Proposes Opening Up Federal Lands Formerly Grazed by Hammond Ranchers," February 25, 2026

OPB and Oregonian/OregonLive — Hammond ranch and Malheur standoff historical coverage

USDA and Department of Interior — Hammond permit restoration and revocation timeline, 2018–2021

5. Cody Peterson – North Dakota

Cody Peterson — a third-generation farmer in North Dakota — filed a federal lawsuit to stop the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) from reinterpreting decades-old conservation easements to expand its power and prohibit common farming techniques on millions of acres of farmland in the upper Midwest. Back in the 1960s, Cody’s family farm — like many others — entered into conservation easements with the federal government, agreeing to protect prairie potholes, shallow depressions in the land formed by ancient glaciers, on their land. However, these easements were left incredibly vague, with landowners agreeing not to drain the potholes but not specifying where exactly they were or what areas were protected or the extent of the restrictions.  

In 2023, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) took advantage of the vagueness and issued a new rule called the National Wildlife Refuge System; Drain Tile Setbacks, expanding federal control over land use. This rule treats any drainage of land covered by an easement as a crime, regardless of how little the potholes are affected by it.

As a result, Cody can no longer use 40 percent of his farmable land, drastically impeding his ability to make a living — an overreach far beyond anything the original conservation easement never intended. “When parties enter into a legal agreement, they must honor its terms unless they mutually agree to change them,” said Jeffery McCoy, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation. “The Fish and Wildlife Service vastly expanded its control over our client’s private land, impeding his ability to make a living and violating the terms of their agreement. The agency must keep its word and honor the original agreement.”  

The FWS cannot reinterpret conservation easements that have existed for more than 50 years, seeking total control over private property in violation of the original agreement. Cody is fighting back to ensure the federal government keeps its word and honors the conservation easement terms.  

Cody Peterson is represented for free by Pacific Legal Foundation. The case is Peterson vs. United States, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota. 

6. Point Reyes National Seashore, California

The last cattle left the land their families had worked since 1879. Nobody from the federal government came to watch.

That morning, the final deadline passed for twelve ranching families to vacate the Point Reyes National Seashore, a stretch of coastal California one hour north of San Francisco. Empty barns remained. Broken corrals sat in piles. The animals were gone. The families were gone. The workers who had lived in housing on the ranches were scrambling to find homes in a county where affordable rentals barely exist. What had taken five generations to build was cleared out in a matter of months, and the land was handed over to the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy.

The story of how this happened starts not with an eviction notice but with a promise. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the federal government used eminent domain and purchase agreements to buy up all fourteen ranches on the Point Reyes peninsula. The families were told they could stay. The National Park Service leased the land back to

them on 20- and 25-year terms, with the understanding, conveyed in meetings and in writing, that they would be able to continue working the land indefinitely. Some of these families had been on the property since before California was a state. They sold their land to the government because they were told they had no choice, and they stayed because they were told they could.

That promise turned out to have fine print. A 1978 amendment to the original Seashore Act clarified that any decision to allow ranching on federal land rested solely at the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior. That discretion, it turned out, could be exercised against the ranchers. And eventually, it was.

The pressure came from environmental groups. Organizations including the Center for Biological Diversity and the Western Watersheds Project argued that cattle operations on the Seashore were damaging water quality, depleting groundwater, promoting invasive plant species, and creating conflict with native tule elk. The ranchers disputed those claims. They formed an association to defend their operations. They pointed to more than a century of land stewardship. They pointed to the fact that their farms were certified organic — among the most environmentally rigorous operations in the country. One ranch family's attorney later asked the question publicly: if the goal is environmental protection, why start by removing the most responsible ranchers in California?

The Nature Conservancy entered the dispute in 2023. The organization offered to mediate between the ranchers and the environmental groups and the National Park Service. What emerged from that process was a settlement. Eleven operators of twelve ranches agreed to cease operations and vacate in exchange for compensation payments from the Conservancy. The total settlement paid to ranch owners was approximately $30 million. The ranch workers — dozens of employees and their families who lived on the property and depended on those jobs — were largely excluded from the negotiation. They received smaller, separate support packages and were told to find new housing in a county where the rental market had already been strained for years.

The community of West Marin felt it immediately. The local Community Land Trust began seeking emergency housing ordinances to shelter displaced ranch families. A cluster of tiny homes in Point Reyes Station was approved on an expedited basis. It was not enough.

The ranchers who refused to accept the settlement did not go quietly. One family, the Giacominis, filed suit arguing the eviction violated their constitutional rights and that the

settlement had been rushed through before the Trump administration took office because the previous administration anticipated that Trump would side with the ranchers. A lawsuit from rancher Bill Niman and his wife Nicolette argued separately that the National Park Service violated federal law by issuing a new land management plan without adequate public input and without proper environmental review.

If either case prevails, the settlement could be unwound. As of April 2026, both lawsuits are still active. The congressional investigation adds another layer. Republican members of Congress have opened a probe into the deal, scrutinizing whether federal agencies acted within their authority and whether the process was manipulated to beat a political deadline.

The Trump administration has made clear that its land policy priorities run in the opposite direction from the Biden-era deal that produced the settlement. The U.S. Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior could, in theory, decline to defend the settlement in court and stand with the ranchers instead.

What is at stake at Point Reyes is not just twelve families. The federal government owns nearly half of all land in the American West. Grazing permits, leases, and land-use agreements exist across millions of acres in multiple states, involving thousands of ranch operations. The outcome at Point Reyes sets a precedent for what environmental groups and federal agencies can do when they decide that ranching on public land is no longer welcome. The ranchers and their advocates argue that this is not about ecology at all. It is about a coordinated effort to end animal agriculture on federal land, starting with the easiest targets — the most regulated, most visible, most isolated operators who lack the political power to fight back effectively.

The historic A Ranch, the M Ranch, the G Ranch — places with names older than the National Park Service itself — are now silent. The Park Service describes the outcome as a conservation victory. Tule elk will now roam where cattle once grazed. The coastal grasslands will be managed for wildlife habitat. Five thousand cattle have been moved off the land. The workers who tended those cattle are living in temporary shelters.

There is something that should not be possible in this story, and yet it is documented in the public record: the federal government bought these ranches from these families, promised them they could stay, then allowed environmental groups to use that same federal land purchase as the legal mechanism to force them off it. The very act of taking the land created the conditions for removing the families permanently.

Kevin Lunny made his last roundup in January 2025 on the G Ranch, the property his family had worked for generations. He herded 100 head of cattle across coastal grasslands above the Pacific, doing what his father and grandfather had done. By April 2026, those pastures were empty, and the fences that had defined the landscape for over a century were coming down.

Sources:

Local News Matters, April 2 2026 — Full history of NPS land purchase in 1960s–70s, leasebacks, promise of indefinite tenancy, families dating to 1800s, April 8 2026 final eviction date

Mendocino Voice, April 2026 — 12 ranches shuttered, $30M settlement, ranch workers excluded, displacement, West Marin housing crisis, Community Land Trust response

California Insider, May 2025 — Broader federal land use implications, Giacomini and Niman lawsuits, Trump administration position, attorney quotes, congressional investigation

Piedmont Exedra / Local News Matters, May 2025 — Giacomini lawsuit detail, Bill Niman suit, Nature Conservancy mediation, settlement timeline, political context around Trump inauguration