Knox County, TN Right to Farm: Farm Nuisance Protection (2026)

The zoning ordinance doesn't devote a stand-alone article to right-to-farm protection; instead it inserts the same note, word for word, at two points in Article 4 and Article 5: once under the standards for rural retreats at Sec. 03 and once at the start of the RP Rural Preservation Zone at Sec. 23. Both read: Certain agricultural uses are permissible by Tennessee state law under the Right to Farm Act and other regulations. These uses, if permissible and deemed in compliance with state regulations, are exempt from planning commission review.

That note is a review exemption, not a nuisance shield the county itself created; it tells applicants that if a farming activity already qualifies for the state's Right to Farm Act protection and follows state agricultural and environmental rules, the county won't put it through a discretionary use-on-review hearing on top of that. The ordinance backs that up with a wide by-right permitted-use list in the A Agricultural Zone at Sec. C, covering all types of agriculture and horticulture, commercial dairies, rabbit, goat, fish and minnow raising, egg-producing ranches, and poultry and hog feeding for commercial purposes, none of which needs a use-on-review hearing to operate.

The E Estates Zone permits farming too, at Sec. K, though only not on commercial basis. The RP Rural Preservation Zone where the review-exemption note also appears is described at Sec. 01 as intended to help insure the continued production of agricultural commodities by encouraging preservation of productive agricultural lands, reviewed for factors including preservation of agricultural and forest lands, water supply protection, and conservation of natural, scenic or historic resources.