Hanover County, VA Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

2-4300, are handled by board resolution and are not codified in the printed Zoning Ordinance. Instead, the county protects agriculture through the A-1 Agricultural District itself. Section 26-17 states the district's purpose is to provide for a full range of agricultural activities and to protect agricultural land, called one of the county's most valuable natural resources, from the depreciating effect of objectionable, hazardous, and unsightly uses, while also protecting watersheds, water resources, forest areas, and scenic values. Section 26-18 then lists agriculture, including dairy farming and the raising of large or small animals, as the district's second permitted use by right, and it builds in distance buffers meant to keep the more intensive parts of a farm from crowding neighboring homes: any sawmill, grain dryer, commercial feedlot, or hog operation must sit at least 250 feet from an off-site dwelling, commercial poultry structures must sit at least 200 feet from an off-site dwelling and 100 feet from any road, and any building used to keep livestock must sit at least 200 feet from a side or rear lot line.

Those buffers work in both directions: they let farming continue as a permitted use without a special exception while limiting how close its more intensive components can sit to a neighbor's house.