Farmer gets fined $2.8 million for plowing

A California farmer faces an enormous fine for plowing soil on his own property.

On this week’s “40 Acres & a Fool,” Cam Edwards and Miss E looked at the curious case of John Duarte of California, a wheat farmer who has been fined an unbelievable $2.8 million for supposedly interfering with protected wetlands on land he purchased in 2012.

The seasonal wetland areas are considered “waters of the United States,” and Duarte should have obtained a permit to work on his own property, authorities claimed. For his part, Duarte said that he had hired a consulting firm to map out where he could legally plow on the property, avoiding the wetland areas.

Cam didn’t understand why this wasn’t an open-and-shut case. Farmers don’t plow through water to prepare for planting wheat.

“In order for him to plow, it has to be dry land,” he pointed out. “And yet they’re claiming that he was plowing into a wetland.”

Miss E summed it up: “I call shenanigans on that crap.”

Listen to more episodes of “40 Acres & a Fool” with Cam Edwards on TheBlaze Contributors.