Davidson County, NC Right to Farm: Agricultural Zoning Protection (2026)

5, Farm Exemption, states that provisions of the Zoning Ordinance adopted under NCGS 160D, Article 7 do not affect bona fide farms as defined in the Ordinance, though using farm property for non-farm purposes still triggers the regulations. 6, Applicability of Regulations, repeats the exemption directly: bona fide farms shall not be affected by the Ordinance, while non-farm uses of the same property remain subject to it. 2(A) establishes the RA-1, RA-2 and RA-3 Rural Agricultural Districts with the stated intent to provide for rural non-farm and farm operations where soil types, topography, lot size and related factors are appropriate, and it directs that long-term sewage disposal in these districts be handled by individual septic tanks or equivalent methods because the mix of uses recognizes agriculture as an important land use there.

13 sets the baseline lot standards for RA-1/RA-2/RA-3 at a 30,000-square-foot minimum lot, 100-foot minimum lot width, and 30-foot front, 10-foot side and 20-foot rear setbacks, giving farm and rural residential parcels room to operate without the tighter dimensional limits applied in suburban districts. Mobile homes are also permitted outright as single-family dwellings on individual lots in these districts, subject only to location controls, reflecting the districts' lower-intensity, farm-compatible character. Because the exemption is defined by the Ordinance's own definitions section rather than by acreage alone, whether a given operation qualifies as a bona fide farm determines whether zoning review applies at all.