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Welcome from the Director
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
 I am again happy to report that the number of subscribers to our e-Newsletter continues to grow, as does interest in the Center, its resources and its activities. The focus of this issue of the newsletter is the Center's increased integration with the individuals, institutions, governmental agencies, and others who comprise the nation's vast agricultural community. This integration has thus far involved the forming of a National Advisory Board, leveraging the expertise of practitioners from the agricultural law community to enhance the Center's resources, forming a partnership with USDA for a seminar series on agricultural law, and providing a digitized compilation of the 50 states' recreational use statutes. These relationships build on the long-standing and very successful partnership the Center has enjoyed with the Drake Agricultural Law Center.
These are just some of the things happening at the Center, and we're glad to share them with you as we look to the future. In the meantime, if the Center can be of any assistance to you, or if you have any suggestions regarding areas of research, information, and outreach in which the Center could engage, please feel free to contact us anytime.
Best regards,
Harrison M. Pittman Center Director |
National Advisory Board Created To Assist Center's Mission
The Center is pleased to announce the formation of a five-member national Advisory Board. The Advisory Board will play an integral role in enhancing the Center's mission as the nation's leading source for agricultural and food law research and information by solidifying the Center's national institutional partnerships and networks and helping to define the Center's research and information priorities. The Board members are John Gilliland, Nancy Bryson, Jim Lukens, Kelly Maureen Moseman and Julie Anna Potts.
John Gilliland, senior international trade counsel for Miller & Chevalier, has an extensive background in agriculture policy, including oversight responsibilities for several major trade negotiations, including the World Trade Organization Doha Development Agenda, U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement, and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Nancy Bryson is principal of The Bryson Group, PLLC, and is the immediate former USDA General Counsel where she directed USDA litigation and mediation in various matters, including food safety, animal and plant health, biotechnology, civil rights, and agricultural trade. Jim Lukens was recently named Executive Director of the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group, served as the inaugural President of the Arkansas Farmers Market Association, and has been integrally involved in sustainable agriculture issues for many years. Maureen Kelly Moseman is the President-Elect of the American Agricultural Law Association, operates a government relations firm in Omaha, Nebraska, held a multi-agency position with USDA for nearly five years, and has been integrally involved in a number of agricultural and food law issues throughout her career. Julie Anna Potts has an extensive agricultural law and policy background, is a former associate with Mayer, Brown, Rowe, and Maw LLP where she specialized in agricultural issues, and currently serves as the General Counsel for the American Farm Bureau Federation.
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Making Legal Research Faster and Easier - States' Recreational Use Statutes
All 50 states in the United States have enacted statutes that confer some degree of liability protection to landowners who allow the general public to enter upon or make use of their land for recreational purposes. Commonly referred to as "recreational use statutes," these laws promote the public policy of encouraging landowners to open their lands so the public may access a wider range of recreational activities. Recreational use statutes are of increasing importance to the agricultural community.
States' Recreational Use Statutes provides the statutory text of each state's recreational use statute, along with the date of its possible expiration. The primary aim of this compilation is to provide the researcher with easy and free access to a state's statutory language by simply clicking on the interactive map.
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| Center Leverages Practitioners' Expertise
The national significance of many of the legal issues associated with agricultural and food law continues to be reflected in the number and nature of inquiries submitted to the Center by attorneys, producers, lenders, policymakers, and others. In order to provide the most timely and accurate legal research and information on these issues, the Center has coordinated with legal experts from across the United States.
An example of such coordination is the Introduction to Food Law in China written by former Center director Michael T. Roberts for publication on the Center web site. The Center has also been fortunate to have the assistance of agricultural lawyer Scott Fancher, LL.M., a specialist in the areas of federal crop insurance and USDA regulations. Also in the area of federal crop insurance, the Center has benefitted from the involvement of attorney Jeff Allen with the Mississippi firm of Hunt Ross & Allen.
Other recent efforts include coordination with attorneys Michael J. Keaton and Jason R. Klinowski of Keaton & Associates, a national law firm that focuses on legal matters pertaining to the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA). Because of the obvious importance of PACA-related issues to the agricultural and food law communities, the Center is focusing efforts toward enhancing the scope, breadth, and timeliness of its PACA resources.
The Center is fortunate to have the involvement of these and other attorneys. If you know of someone who might wish to contribute to the resources of the Center, please ask them to contact us at NatAgLaw@uark.edu. |
Seminar Series Partners: Center, CSREES, and USDA Economists Group
The National Agricultural Law Center, the USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES) and the USDA Economists Group have partnered to host a seminar series that will focus on numerous agricultural and food law topics. The primary purpose of the series is to promote the importance of agricultural law throughout the USDA and to foster a better understanding of agricultural and food law legal issues to USDA agencies and personnel.
The first seminar in the series is scheduled for March 4, 2008, in the USDA Forest Service Building in Washington, DC. The main focus of the seminar will be to introduce and discuss the history and future of the National Agricultural Law Center, the role and importance of agricultural and food law, and the Center's role in providing research and information to the nation's agricultural and food law communities.
Subsequent seminars will focus on specific substantive areas, including energy and biofuels, carbon credits and market trading, taxation, sustainability and the law, and animals and the law. |
Outreach - Conventions, Presentations, and Meetings
 During this reporting period, Center staff attended several conferences and workshops and participated in an international forum.
Harrison Pittman and Marne Coit attended the Southern Sustainble Agriculture Working Group (SSAWG) conference in Louisville, Kentucky, where over 1,000 attendees from 13 southern states gathered to participate in discussions on sustainable agriculture. Harrison presented "Protection From Loss: Limited Liability Companies" that focused on the advantages and disadvantages associated the Limited Liability Companies and other common business structures. Other featured speakers included Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms and farmer and author Wendell Berry.
Harrison Pittman presented "Past, Present, and Future Application of States' Recreational Use Statutes for Landowner and Recreational Users of Land" at the Annual Mid-Year Meeting of the Arkansas Bar Association in Memphis, Tennessee.
Erimar von der Osten attended the first International Conference of Ministers of Agriculture at the newly created "Forum International Green Week" in Berlin, Germany. Over 1,500 agricultural experts, including 32 ministers and under-secretaries, as well as 650 members of goverment delegations from 36 countries, gathered to discuss such topics as: How can the growing world population be fed while more bio-energy is generated at the same time? How can we achieve fair global trade in the process? Does the EU's system of agricultural subsidies and programs sufficiently address climate change, water management and biodiversity? Can bioenergy coontribute in a sustainable way to environmental care and energy security? |
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Recent Postings to Center Website 
110 reports were updated during this reporting period.
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