Mebane, NC Right to Farm: Farm Nuisance Protection (2026)

Section 1-5, Authority, is adopted under the power North Carolina's General Assembly grants cities in NCGS Chapter 160D, and it carries a farm carve-out that applies across the UDO's zoning jurisdiction, including the city's ETJ described in Section 1-4. The exemption is broad: it blocks the city from using zoning tools, such as use tables, dimensional standards, or the Section 2-7 permit requirement, to regulate, restrict, prohibit, or deter a bona fide farm and its related agricultural uses. Two carve-outs pull activity back under the ordinance.

First, commercial feeder or breeder operations sited on farmland must still comply with the UDO's use, dimensional, and permitting requirements like any other development. Second, once farm property is put to a nonfarm purpose, that use loses the exemption entirely and is subject to the ordinance the same as any other parcel. Section 1-5 also flags an overlap with a separate instrument: Chapter 4 of the City of Mebane City Code independently regulates the keeping of animals within the corporate limits, so even where the UDO's farm exemption applies, some animal operations may still be barred in particular zoning districts under that separate animal-control chapter.

The provision was last amended June 7, 2021. Because the exemption sits in the ordinance's Authority article rather than in Article 4's use tables, it functions as a threshold rule the Zoning Administrator applies before reaching any UDO use, density, or dimensional standard for property being farmed.