Ascension Parish, LA Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

Ascension Parish's Unified Land Development Code governs land use only in unincorporated Ascension Parish, since Donaldsonville, Gonzales and Sorrento each administer their own zoning. Appendix I, Table A, the parish's master use table, lists a row for 'Agricultural Uses (Light)' with the specific use 'Farming and Livestock related activities' marked Y, meaning permitted outright with no conditional use review, in the Medium Intensity Residential (RM), Rural (R), Conservation (C), Conservation 5 (C5), Light Industrial (LI), Medium Industrial (MI) and Heavy Industrial (HI) districts. The same row is left blank for the Mixed Use (MU), Mixed Use 2 (MU2), Crossroad Commercial (CC), Mobile Home/RV Park and Airport districts, so farming and livestock keeping is not a listed use there.

A separate 'Commercial Type Animal Facility' row under 'Agricultural Uses (Heavy)' is marked Y only in Conservation, Conservation 5, Light Industrial and Medium Industrial, showing the parish treats large-scale commercial livestock operations more restrictively than ordinary farming. There is no standalone right-to-farm or nuisance-shield ordinance in the parish's own code; the protection a farmer gets locally is the zoning permission itself. Anyone wanting to farm or keep livestock on land zoned outside the seven listed districts must apply to the Zoning Official for a use interpretation under Section 17-2090(P) or petition the Zoning Commission for rezoning. The Rural (R) and Conservation (C) districts, which cover much of the parish's low-density unincorporated land, are where the by-right farming permission matters most.