5 Farmers Battle for Rural America

Standing in a ditch drier than a saltine, Iowa landowner Dan Ward kicks at parched dirt. He cannot build a pond on his 420-acre farm property because government officials consider a dry depression that runs half-a-mile across the land, more than 100 miles from the nearest navigable river, to be “waters of the United States.”

How much acreage can a president take with the stroke of a pen? The answer, says sixth-generation rancher Chris Heaton, is not a single acre beyond the law. Heaton’s livestock operation is at risk from the federal government’s latest land appropriation.

Sold: Integrity for the price of 12 cedars and a single oak. When tree rustlers cut and stole prime timber from a slave cemetery in rural Georgia, they desecrated headstones, damaged gravesites and removed 200 years of canopy growth, ensuring an explosion of underbrush and further ruin.

When Jeremy Bennett denied wildlife officers entry to his private business for a warrantless inspection, he was prosecuted, facing a fine and seven months in prison. Owner of a taxidermy and deer processing business, Bennett sued for breach of the Fourth Amendment, and his case forced the state to abide by the Bill of Rights.