Football, it’s said, is a game of inches. It’s said of horseshoes, too, and baseball, and marriage, education, child-rearing and other aspects of life. The phrase rises above the level of cliché by how evocative it is: Beings in opposition, grinding, clawing forward, measuring progress in the tiniest victories. The field of battle may be glorious, or a nasty mudpit of heartbreak.

The legal battles over where agricultural operations can be located and how they operate are being fought in the mudpit, and the mire is getting worse. Most recent is the announcement that the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF) in Mercersburg, Pa., is seeking to crowd-fund the costs of participating in a lawsuit defending the Lake Erie Bill of Rights (LEBOR).

The LEBOR law was passed earlier this year in Toledo, Ohio, amending that community’s charter to allow citizens to sue on behalf of the lake over pollution. The initiative stemmed from a 2014 incident when an algae bloom on the lake, fed by agricultural runoff, rendered Toledo’s city water undrinkable. An Ohio farmer immediately sued over the new law, calling it “unconstitutional and unlawful,” and in March, the judge granted a preliminary injunction as the legal issues are sorted out.

With the vote in Toledo, the battle between agricultural interests and those who object to ag operations moves to the local level. CELDF’s effort to crowd-fund its legal costs, saying it’s “fighting for what’s right” against “big business” interests seeks to draw financial fuel from thousands who otherwise have no standing in the fight. A lot of hand-wringing has been done over the trend toward state-by-state laws in food and ag, but they are a cakewalk compared with the complexity of dealing town-by-town, with thousands of parties chiming in. That’s not a game of inches; it’s a game of centimeters.

It would be in the industry’s best interests to find a way to stop playing the game. Not to forfeit, but to climb out of the mud. Right-to-farm laws have been in all 50 states for many years; more recent efforts to further limit neighbors’ options for suing are not playing well in the court of public opinion. There’s plenty of heartbreak in this fight: For every new development of townhomes on the outskirts of town suing over the “nuisance” caused by a plant that’s been in place for decades, there are impoverished folks who have been on their rural lands for generations, who are being taken advantage of by companies that do the bare minimum in the way of nuisance and pollution control.

And for every resident complaining of the feathers or the smell, there are dozens or hundreds of families depending on the income provided by the meat supply chain.

The level of rhetoric makes it hard to see how to get from the muddy battlefield to a place of negotiation and compromise. One thing is sure: Spreading the field of play out across towns and individuals nationwide is a losing proposition for the industry. Which presents a conundrum: Most meat executives are big fans of the administration’s less-federal-regulation, more-states’-rights philosophy. But it’s exactly that approach that’s backing the meat industry into a corner.

Which is the greater risk: Throwing an interception, or getting sacked?

Would you rather throw an interception or be sacked?

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