For related articles and more information, please visit OCA’s Minnesota News page and our Environment and Climate Resource page.

The state Court of Appeals ruled Monday that pesticide drifting from its intended farm onto an adjacent Stearns County organic farm could be considered a trespassing violation by the company that sprayed the pesticide.

The appellate court ruling reinstates a lawsuit filed by organic farmers Oluf and Debra Johnson against Paynesville Farmers Union Cooperative Oil Co. The Johnsons alleged that the co-op’s crop spraying of nearby farms on windy days caused the pesticide to drift onto their organic crops and damage them, preventing the Johnsons from selling those crops as organic. The Johnsons also had to take parts of their fields out of production for three years because of the presence of the unwanted pesticide.

The Stearns County case is the first time in Minnesota that an appellate court has been asked to decide whether “unwanted pesticide drift from a targeted field to an adjacent otherwise organic farming operation can constitute a trespass,” according to the Court of Appeals opinion. “We hold that it can.”

The appellate court didn’t say that what the Paynesville co-op did was a trespass, but it sent the case back to the district court for additional hearings.

The Johnsons turned their farm into an organic one in the 1990s to take advantage of the higher prices organic crops and seeds bring at market. They posted signs noting that the farm was organic, created a buffer between their property and neighboring farms and asked the co-op to take precautions to avoid overspraying, according to the Court of Appeals opinion.

But the co-op violated state law four times from 1998-2008 by spraying chemicals that landed on the Johnson’s organic farm, the opinion said. The opinion said that the co-op was cited four times by the Minnesota Department of Agriculture for violating pesticide laws that make it illegal to “apply a pesticide resulting in damage to adjacent property.”