A bill that would weaken North Dakota's 1930s-era anti-corporate farming law is getting a much more hostile reception in the state Senate.

A Senate committee has voted unanimously against the bill, which would allow up to 15 people to be shareholders in a farming or ranching corporation, with the operator as the principal shareholder. North Dakota already allows corporate farms with as many as 15 shareholders, as long as they're related.

The committee rejected the bill even though the bill's sponsor, Tom Brusegaard, R-Gilby, drafted amendments to try to address some of the opponents' concerns. He changed the bill so that only three of the shareholders could be unrelated and further defined what it meant to be "actively engaged in farming."

But even after Brusegaard's amendments were adopted, the committee still voted 6-0 against the bill, which should go before the full Senate early next week. Sen. Tim Flakoll, R-Fargo, chaired the committee, and said the senators didn't feel comfortable with the way the bill was worded and how it would "play out" if enacted.

"We couldn't come to a general consensus," he said.

The bill's Senate hearing last week attracted a huge crowd in the Legislature's largest hearing room, and the hearing lasted almost three hours. Opponents worried that it would open the door to full-fledged corporate farming and hasten the demise of the family farm, while supporters saw it as a way to give producers more options for obtaining operating cash.

The North Dakota Farm Bureau supported the bill, and the North Dakota Farmers Union opposed it.

The bill did not generate nearly as much controversy when it was in the House, and Brusegaard said that helped keep the discussion from getting overly emotional.

"I think the opponents were presumptuous in thinking it wouldn't get out of the House," Flakoll said.

Brusegaard said misperceptions about the bill and the governor's hints that he has concerns about it "really made it difficult." He said it was "hard to separate facts from rhetoric" and combat the "save the family farm war cry."

Brusegaard is a fifth-generation farmer who has 1,200 acres of wheat, soybeans and sunflowers. Although the bill isn't expected to pass the Senate, Brusegaard hasn't given up. He said he plans to try to do more to get agriculture groups on board by talking about the issue with them.