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

Chapter 16, the county's noise ordinance, sets civil and criminal penalties for sound that disturbs a person of ordinary sensibilities, but § 16-4 lists activities the chapter simply does not reach. Item (3) exempts 'the production of agricultural, horticultural and forestal products, including sawmill operations,' language that tracks the noise chapter's own definitions in § 16-3 of agricultural production (commercial crop, livestock, dairy and feedlot operations), agricultural products (field crops, fruits, vegetables, horticultural specialties, livestock and livestock products), and forestal products (lumber, pulpwood, posts, firewood and other wood products for sale or farm use).

Because the exemption covers 'production,' equipment noise from planting, harvesting, tending livestock, and running a sawmill on the farm is not subject to Chapter 16's decibel-based nuisance and civil-penalty scheme the way a residential or commercial noise source would be. The exemption in § 16-4 sits alongside others for emergency work, public utility and road repair, permitted parades and assembly events, and mining areas permitted by the state Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, showing the county built a narrow carve-out for specific favored activities rather than a broad right-to-farm statute.

The file contains no separate countywide right-to-farm chapter granting farms blanket nuisance immunity outside this noise exemption; other chapters, such as the animal control provisions in Chapter 4, still apply their own standards to livestock kept on farmland, and zoning's A-1 Agricultural District regulates where farm uses and structures may be sited.