Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Greetings and Happy New Year! A lot has happened since our previous newsletter, and it's always a pleasure to take a few moments and share updates with you from the fourth quarter of 2014, as well as a few of our upcoming activities.
In upcoming news, on April 17 the Agricultural & Food Law Consortium will host the Second Annual Mid-South Agricultural & Environmental Law Program at the University of Memphis School of Law. CLE credit (including 5 hours of general and 1 hour of ethics credit) is available for attorneys, and special rates are available for students and other attendees not seeking CLE credit. We hope to see you there!
In November, the Consortium hosted a webinar titled " Mandatory GM Labeling Laws: Overview and Status of Current Labeling Laws." Thanks to presenter and Consortium partner Ross Pifer, the webinar was a great success. In fact, the audience was large enough that we were unable to accommodate all who attempted to sign on! We have fixed that problem for our future programs, but the recording is available on the Center website, or you can email Senior Staff Attorney Rusty Rumley with a request for the link.
Since our last newsletter, we have stayed busy on many fronts, including obtaining new funding for projects with Center partners from many parts of the country. Center staff continues to work on research, outreach and education in many areas, including animal agriculture, Clean Air Act and other environmental law issues, federal crop insurance, grain dealer and warehousing laws, and local/regional food system development, among others. Additionally, the Center is preparing to host Brandon Willis, Administrator of the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA), during a March visit to Arkansas. Watch for more updates on these topics on the Center website and in future newsletters.
Finally, we are proud to welcome several new Center employees who will work on our various agricultural and food law research and information activities. I hope you can take a few moments to read about them in the article below. At the same time, we say "goodbye" and "thank you" to Emily Bridges. Emily is a great friend to the Center and has been absolutely outstanding during her years of service. We wish Emily and her family the best of luck in her new role at the Arkansas Department of Human Services.
I hope you enjoy the brief updates in this newsletter. We sincerely appreciate your interest in the National Agricultural Law Center!
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Second Annual Mid-South Agricultural & Environmental Law Conference
After a substantial turnout and enthusiastic reviews of last year's conference, the Center, as part of the Agricultural and Food Law Consortium, will be hosting another Mid-South Agricultural and Environmental Law Conference this coming April on Friday, April 17, 2015, at the University of Memphis, Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law, from 8:15 am through 4 pm.
The workshop will have speakers covering a wide range of topics, including:
- Agricultural & Environmental Law Update: Recent Trends and Developments
- 2014 Farm Bill for Practitioners, Lenders, and Other Ag Professionals
- USDA National Appeals Division 101: What You and Your Farm Client Need to Know
- Farm Succession & Estate Planning for Mid-South Agriculture
- Ethical Considerations for Farm Clients
- Easement Negotiation 101: Focus on Gas Pipelines and Energy Transmission Lines
The program has been approved in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee for five hours of general continuing legal education credit and one hour of ethics credit.
For attorneys seeking continuing education credit, the cost is $150; for other attendees not seeking professional credit the fee is $100; for students the fee is $25. In all cases, the cost includes lunch and materials. More information and a link to register for the conference is available here.
A special thanks to our conference sponsors, including Delta Farm Press and the Mississippi Bar Association: Natural Resources, Environment & Energy Section. For more information about becoming a conference sponsor, please contact Harrison Pittman.
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Regulation of Grain Sales and Storage
In August, the Center launched a project to digitize state laws setting out the requirements governing the operation of grain dealers and warehouses. For both grain dealers and warehouses, requirements are very different from state to state, ranging from no regulation at all to very significant requirements, including licensing, bonding, statutory liens, and civil and criminal sanctions.
The digitization part of this project has been completed, and can be viewed here. However, we are continuing this project with a series of fact sheets that will be helpful to stakeholders involved in grain production, sales, marketing and policy. The first fact sheet, an overview of typical state regulation provisions, is available here. Others will be published over the next few months.
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Focus on Outreach: NASDA Annual Conference
In November, Center Director Harrison Pittman participated in the annual meeting of the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture ("NASDA"). As part of the Center-NASDA partnership, Harrison discussed recent developments and legal issues regarding industrial hemp production in the United States. He also participated in and spoke to a meeting of the NASDA Legal Task Force.
The industrial hemp presentation was delivered as part of the NASDA Animal and Plant Health Industries Meeting, chaired by Mike Strain, Commissioner, Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. During that meeting, NASDA membership approved the creation of an Industrial Hemp Task Force. The Center continues to coordinate with this task force in furtherance of its partnership with NASDA and its mission as the nation's leading source of agricultural and food law research and information.
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State-Specific Direct Marketing Guides
Thanks to a grant from USDA/NIFA, and in collaboration with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Center has been working on a project to create legal guides for producers that wish to engage in the direct marketing of their agricultural products. The project focus is on states that are part of the MarketMaker program.
The guides give an overview of the federal and state regulatory systems important to farming operations, including the structure of an agricultural business, as well as marketing plans for the business, taxation concerns and labor and employment issues. They then discuss the regulation of certain specific products, including dairy, eggs, fish and other aquatics, produce, grains and cereals, honey and maple syrup, meat, poultry and organic marketing, and finish with an extensive glossary of terms relevant to the legal and production concerns raised in the book.
We are nearing the completion of this three-year project and the majority of the guides have been posted here. More information about accompanying webinars will soon be available on the same page.
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Employee Update
The Center has welcomed several new employees within the last few months and is excited for the next adventure of one who recently left!
Good Luck to: 
Emily Bridges, an Arkansas attorney who has served as a Center research consultant for the past several years. She focused her Center research on a variety of agricultural issues, including Article 9 of the Uniform Commercial Code and the Clean Air Act. She was also an important contributor to the Agricultural and Food Law Blog. Emily will be continuing her career as an Attorney Specialist with the Office of Chief Counsel for the Arkansas Department of Human Services. During her time at the Center, Emily has been a valuable contributor and will be greatly missed.
Welcome to:
Shelby Buettner, a third-year law student at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. Immediately prior to law school, Shelby worked at the United Nations Environmental Programme collecting and analyzing data to make policy recommendations to member states related to environmental and sustainability problems. Before that, Shelby was a project manager for Department of Defense and NASA efforts to build miniature surgical robots for use on the battlefield and in space. Shelby will be focusing her Center research on local food systems in the Arkansas Delta.
Catherine Houlihan, a third-year law student at the Appalachian School of Law. She was born in California but was raised on a small ranch in central Nebraska. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Animal Science from California State University, Fresno. While at Fresno State she was the student manager for the dairy research facility. As a law student she has been active as an executive member of the Appalachian Natural Resource Law Journal, as well as earning a position as semi-finalist in the West Virginia Sustainable Energy Moot Court Competition. Her professional experience includes work with the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. At the Center, Catherine will focus on mineral leasing and environmental issues.
Jeremy Baker, a second-year law student at the University of Richmond. Born in Hillsborough, NC, he has worked for over 10 years at Maple View Farm and Ice Cream. In 2010, he graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. At Richmond, he is currently a member of the University of Richmond Law Review, the Walter Scott McNeill Law Society, and the John Marshall Scholarship program. Jeremy's Center work includes a focus on federal regulations that affect agriculture.
Corey Brown, a second-year law student at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she is a staff member for the North Carolina Journal of Law & Technology and a board member of the UNC Environmental Law Project. She was raised on her family's farm in eastern North Carolina. Before law school, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Geological Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her previous experience includes an internship with the National Pork Producers Council in Washington D.C., where she assisted the Chief Environmental Counsel. Corey will focus her Center work on direct marketing guides for agricultural producers.
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Center Participation in American Agricultural Law Association Meeting
In October, Center staff attended the annual AALA meeting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As always, it was great to see friends and colleagues at the conference, which covers a wide range of agricultural law issues.
Harrison Pittman, Center Director, presented as a panelist discussing crop insurance litigation, while Senior Staff Attorney Elizabeth Rumley was a member of the planning committee, as well as a speaker discussing animal welfare labeling claims. The next AALA conference will be in Charleston, South Carolina from October 21-23, 2015. For more information click here.
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