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In a victory for family farmers and local communities, North Dakota voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly upheld their state’s rules prohibiting corporate farming.

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According to the North Dakota Secretary of State, fully 75 percent of voters cast ballots against Measure 1, which would have loosened century-old corporate farming restrictions. North Dakota is one of nine states that has such a law on the books.

Last year, the North Dakota State Legislature passed SB 2351, which would have allowed corporate ownership of swine and dairy operations. Opponents of SB 2351 said the law was “an invitation to large, out-of-state companies to set up operations in North Dakota,” as the New York Times wrote.

“With corporate farming, they just don’t have the connections,” Laurie Wagner, whose husband’s grandparents started their farm in the 1930s, told the Times this month. “They could buy up all the land, and it means nothing to them. They could make it impossible for people like us to compete.”

With that in mind, the North Dakota Farmers Union (NDFU) set about collecting more than 20,000 signatures to put the referendum on the ballot. Measure 1 was the result of that effort.