Compiled by
Ann B. Winfred
Publicity Director/
Webmaster |
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Welcome from the Director 
Dear Friends and Colleagues, As always, it is great to have the opportunity to share with you some of the latest and upcoming activities at the Center. 2010 has been a busy, productive and satisfying year for us here at the Center, and we look forward to even more rewarding challenges in this new year. In December, the second meeting of the Center's National Advisory Board was held, but this time the newly established Board met in person. The two day meeting was held in Fayetteville, Arkansas and fulfilled a major step towards developing the Strategic Plan for the Center for the coming year. By the time the next quarterly newsletter is issued, we will be able to share some of the details of that plan along with any new changes it will mean for the Center and the nation's agricultural community. In the meantime, please feel free to offer any suggestions you think should be included in strategic planning considerations. We recently initiated a new project titled, "Development of Tribal Affairs Technical Resources," a one-year partnership funded by the USDA Office of Tribal Affairs and USDA Risk Management Education program. As part of this project, Center staff will complete a technical assistance resource guide and a new Reading Room dedicated to agricultural issues relative to Native Americans. Much of this project will be completed this spring with further outreach planned for the coming summer. We are particularly excited that this project will envelop the Center's research, education, and extension functions, specifically including eXtension. We continue to expand the scope of the Case Law Indexes and will soon be providing links to the full text of each of the cases listed in the Case Law Indexes. The end result will provide a "one stop shop" for a comprehensive listing of cases, summaries, and text of opinions for legal researchers and others. We are all very pleased with the review of our website viewing statistics which shows that almost a half million unique visitors entered the site and viewed at least two pages per visit. That half million visitors represents a 40% increase over 2009, and one of our goals in this new year is to see that number increase even more dramatically as new and expanded resources are added to the site.
Best regards,
Center Director
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 National Advisory Board Meeting Held in Fayetteville
On December 2-3 the inaugural meeting of the Center's National Advisory Board was held on the University of Arkansas campus in Fayetteville. The Advisory Board is the first in the Center's history to be sanctioned by the USDA and National Agricultural Library. The purpose of the Board is to ensure that the Center proactively engages the range of legal, policy, funding, and other strategic issues necessary to its long-term service to the nation's agricultural community. Based on the input and suggestions of the Board during the December meeting, a proposed Strategic Plan will be submitted for Board review on or before February 15, 2011. Following that review, the final Strategic Plan will be developed and its implementation will begin June 1, 2011. The Board is comprised of Peggy Kirk Hall, Senior Research-Policy Associate and Director of the Agricultural and Rural Law Program at the Ohio State University Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Developmental Economics; Nancy Bryson, Chair of the Agriculture and Food practice at Holland & Hart, LLP and former General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Agriculture; Michael T. Roberts, Associate General Counsel, Global Regulation and Government Relations, for Roll International Corporation and former Center Director; Dan Dooley, Vice-President for the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Senior Vice President for External Relations for the UC System; and Ellen Steen, General Counsel of the American Farm Bureau Federation and its affiliate companies, including the American Agricultural Insurance Company (AAIC) and American Farm Bureau Insurance Services. |
The Center's Workshop Series on Proposed GIPSA Rules
As discussed in our 3rd Quarter e-Newsletter, Center staff recently hosted a series of workshops, including a webinar, for poultry and livestock producers. The workshops covered the proposed GIPSA rules governing the way producers, packers, dealers and contractors raise, buy, contract for and sell their products. At the meetings, staff attorneys provided an overview of GIPSA's proposed rule changes for poultry and livestock, reviewed the UDSA rule-making process, and explained how to submit comments on the proposals. Six in-person workshops were held -- in Fayetteville, AR; Russellville, AR; Nashville, AR; Ruston, LA; Poteau, OK; and Booneville, AR. The Ruston workshop was hosted by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and organized by Ron Harrell of Louisiana Farm Bureau. The Poteau workshop was hosted by Oklahoma State University Extension and organized by Shannon Ferrell of OSU. The average audience size for each of the workshops was around 100 and very lively question and answer sessions followed every presentation. A webinar presentation of the workshop drew an additional 125+ participants. The webinar was made available online for download and can be accessed here. Since its posting, an additional 208 people have viewed the presentation. Additionally, over 560 people have downloaded the workshop handout, and 485 have viewed the PowerPoint presentation The comment period has now closed, and over 66,000 comments have been submitted. However, interest in the proposed rules still remains high. As a result, staff attorney Elizabeth Rumley and Shannon Ferrell (Assistant Prof. of Agric. Law in the Dep't of Agric. Economics at Oklahoma State University) co-wrote an article titled "The Role of Economic and Legal Analysis in the GIPSA Rules Debate." It will appear in Choices, a publication of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association. For more information on the Packers and Stockyards Act, click here. |
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Website Statistics - The Year in Review
As many of you know, a large number of our center resources are divided into reading rooms. These 46 rooms are based on different topics in agricultural law, and include resources specific to that area of law. So someone interested in the legal issues involved in Business Organizations, for example, can go to that reading room to learn about them. In looking at the statistics, it was incredible to see how the top ten most-visited reading rooms changed in just a year!
Search trends for this year were also interesting. Of the top 10 phrases that people entered into search engines and subsequently clicked to a center resource, four were searching for Pigford resources, three concerned the 2011 estate tax, one was "contract law," one was "farm bill," and one was a search for the Center itself. Probably as a result of the search phrases, Congressional Research Service reports concerning Pigford and the 2011 estate tax were among the most-viewed links on the site.
We really enjoyed looking back at the trends that shaped our audience during 2010, and are interested to see what changes 2011 will bring to the field of agricultural law. We also look forward to further exponential growth in years to come, and most importantly, to continuing our role as the nation's leading source for agricultural and food law research and information.
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Web Page Showcase
Beginning this quarter, each newsletter will feature a different aspect of our website, with the hope that our visitors may be exposed to resources we provide of which they may be unaware. In this newsletter, we are proud to showcase our Farm Bills page. The main feature of this page is the historical collection of digitized farm bills, beginning with the original 1933 bill and continuing to the most recent 2008 version. The bills were digitized by the Center under a cooperative agreement with the National Agricultural Library and are freely available for download, as are all of the resources on our website. Other Farm Bill resources include the legislative history of each of the bills, research articles, and links to outside sources. The depth and breadth of material provided in this area of the website surpasses anything currently available elsewhere, making it the most complete reference collection for researchers interested in the farm bill.
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Expansion of Reading Room Case Law Indexes
Over the past quarter Center staff has worked to expand and complete many of the Case Law Indexes that are made available to the public. The indexes provide a thorough, but not necessarily exhaustive, list of recent, relevant cases for each of the reading rooms. One complete CLI (Forestry) was constructed and fourteen existing CLIs were extended back some significant portion of time or back to the beginning for that area of agricultural law. The Corporate Farming Laws and Checkoff Programs CLIs were extended back to the first case published on the topic, while the National Organic Program CLI was extended back to the issuance of the regulations in 2000. The Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act CLI was extended back to the Act's amendment that included the statutory trust provision, and the Packers and Stockyards Act CLI was extended back to the passage of the act in 1921 for federal appellate court cases and to 1985 for state and federal district court cases. The following table lists the extended CLIs with their beginning dates:
Over 1850 new cases were added to these indexes with more expansions coming in the near future. The Pesticides CLI now contains 570 entries, Secured Transactions has 583, Commodity Programs has 701, Forestry has 802, Labor has 1356 and Perishable Ag Commodities Act has 1374. The Landowner Liability, Agritourism, Urban Encroachment, Food Safety and the Finance & Credit CLIs are in the process of being expanded and will be completed before the end of February, 2011.
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Graduate Assistants Join Center Research Team
Kerri C. Boling, B.S.A., J.D.
Kerri Boling was born and raised on a poultry and cattle farm in Gravette, Arkansas. In 2007, she graduated from the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Business with a minor in Global Agriculture. While obtaining her undergraduate degree, Kerri interned for the Arkansas Farm Bureau and Tyson Foods, Inc. Kerri was also selected by the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food & Life Sciences to serve as the Spitze Scholar in Washington DC where she spent the summer working on agricultural issues and constituency services for United States Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. She also completed study abroad programs in Scotland and Belize. In 2010, Kerri graduated from the University of Arkansas School of Law. While in law school, she clerked for the Henry Law Firm in Fayetteville, Tyson Foods, Inc., The National Agricultural Law Center, United States Department of Agriculture Office of the General Counsel, and for the Honorable Jim Gunter of the Arkansas Supreme Court. Kerri is licensed to practice law in the state of Arkansas.
Richard Burnett, B.S., M.S., J.D.
Richard Burnett recently graduated from the University of Oregon School of Law. During law school, Richard worked as a graduate teaching fellow for the University of Oregon Department of Biology. This assignment involved assisting professors in the teaching and administration of courses on ecology, genetics, and evolution. Prior to completing law school, Richard earned Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in agronomy from Brigham Young University. As an undergraduate, Richard participated in research on the application of soil science methodologies to archaeology investigations. His graduate research continued in this area of study and involved identifying soil organic matter evidence of ancient Maya agriculture at Tikal, Guatemala.
Alexandra Gaintseva
Alexandra Gaintseva graduated from Novgorod State University in 2009. While in law school, she worked as a legal counsel at a local non-profit organization, "Consumers' Union," and dealt with cases involving the protection of consumer rights. She was specifically responsible for representing consumers in courts of different levels and in front of governmental bodies. During her last three years in law school, she also enrolled in the English language instruction program and attained an extra qualification of "Professional Communication Translator." In 2009-2010, Alexandra attended the University of Arkansas School of Law as a visiting scholar.
Maxim Gubarev
Maxim Gubarev graduated cum laude from the Novgorod State University, Russia in 2010 with a Specialist of Law degree. While in law school, Maxim participated in Jessup Moot Court Competitions, National Rounds in 2007, 2008 and 2010. During law school, he served as a legal consultant for the Center of Legal Aid for the Public. While a visiting student in the University of Taru, Estonia, he also participated in the Prometheus Program on Transition Studies in 2007. During the 2008-2009 academic year, Maxim studied at the University of Arkansas School of Law as a visiting scholar. He recently finished an internship at the Department of Analysis and Investigation of "Thunder" Ltd., a retail company in Novgorod. Previously he interned at the export-import customs brokerage firm Alpha-Broker in Novgorod, dealing with the Russian Customs Service. He is licensed to practice law in Russia and participated in his first trial in June-July 2010.
David Jackson, B.A., J.D.
David Jackson hails originally from the Washington DC Metro area.  Prior to law school, David worked with leading technology companies for over a decade, including America Online, Excite@Home, and Connectix Corporation. After the collapse of the technology market, David spent a year teaching English in the People's Republic of China at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Bei Hang Da Xue). David then returned to the U.S. and eventually pursued his J.D. at the University of Kansas focusing on International Trade Law. In 2007, David spent a summer as an intern with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service. After graduating from law school in December 2007, David began working as an associate at Miller & Company, P.C., a boutique law firm in Kansas City solely focused on international trade law.
David Milender, B.A., J.D.
David Milender grew up in the far north suburbs of Chicago. He attended Purdue University where he was a member of the Kappa Alpha Order and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Academic Honors Society. After graduating with highest distinction in August 2007 with a B.A. in Political Science, he attended law school at the University of Iowa College of Law. While in law school, David was involved in the in-house clinical law program, focusing primarily on immigration and political asylum. After his second year of law school, he worked for the Muscatine County Attorney as a prosecuting intern and continued to do so until his graduation from law school in May 2010. David is licensed to practice law in the state of Colorado.
Kathryn Peters, B.S., J.D.
Originally from central Wisconsin, Kathryn Peters headed west to attend the University of Oregon where she received a Bachelor of Science in Accounting in 1995. While in school, she designed, produced, and marketed a line of clothing. She continued to run her clothing business until she entered the University of Oregon School of Law, where she received her Juris Doctor in 2010 with certificates in tax law and public interest and public service law. While attending law school, Kathryn worked as both an intern and extern at the Lane County Legal Aid and Advocacy Center. She also worked as a research assistant to Professor Nancy Shurtz on projects concerning sustainability, green construction, and tax policy. Kathryn's interest in urban decay, sustainability, agriculture, and tax policy prompted her to write the note, "Creating a Sustainable Urban Agriculture Revolution," that was published in the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation Spring 2010 issue.
Jeremy Pyle, B.A., J.D.
Jeremy Pyle grew up in Iowa and Indiana and graduated from DePauw University in 2003 with a B.A. in political science. Jeremy worked in sales and marketing before attending the University of Oregon School of Law, where he received his Juris Doctor in 2010 with a certificate in Environmental and Natural Resources law. While in law school, Jeremy served as Executive Editor of the Journal of Environmental Law and Litigation and as Editor-in-Chief of the Western Environmental Law Update. In addition, he served as a legal intern for a small, non-profit environmental advocacy group and as a law clerk for the Oregon Attorney General at the Oregon Department of Justice. Jeremy also interned for an Oregon state legislator during the 2009 legislative session. Jeremy recently co-authored an article on microlivestock and urban homesteading in Ecology Law Currents, forthcoming Fall 2010.
Benjamin Thomas, B.A., J.D.
Ben Thomas graduated from the Washington University School of Law in 2010. In Spring of 2010, Ben worked full-time in Washington, DC for Chairman Jon Leibowitz of the Federal Trade Commission through the Congressional and Administrative Law Clinic. At the FTC, he worked closely with the Chairman and his staff to resolve antitrust and consumer protection matters coming from both the Bureau of Competition and the Bureau of Consumer Protection. In 2009, Ben was awarded the Janet D. Steiger Fellowship by the National Association of Attorneys General and the ABA Section of Antitrust Law. As a Steiger Fellow, he worked in the Antitrust and Consumer Protection Divisions of the New Mexico Attorney General's Office where he performed an integral role in the Foreclosure Rescue Scam Taskforce. He also worked on a range of competition issues and other issues arising under the Unfair Practices Act. Prior to law school, Ben worked as a teaching assistant in Austria through the Department of State's Austrian-American Fulbright Program and spent many years working on the family farm in the High Plains region of West Texas.
Allison Waldrip, B.A., J.D.
Allison Waldrip obtained her J.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2010. During law school, Allison was named Best Oral Advocate at the National Moot Court Competition in New York City, where her team was also awarded First Place. Allison was named Best Oralist at the Ben J. Altheimer Moot Court Competition, where her team won Best Brief and First Place. She was also on the First Place team in the William H. Sutton Barrister's Union Trial Competition. Allison is a 2007 cum laude graduate of the University of Arkansas, where she obtained degrees in Broadcast Journalism and English.
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 Center Staff Outreach
Director Harrison Pittman with Staff Attorneys Rusty Rumley and Elizabeth Rumley plus nine of the Graduate Assistants attended the American Agricultural Law Association's 2010 Annual Agricultural Law Symposium held in Omaha, NE the first week in October. The Center hosted the Farm Bill Panel entitled "Farm Bill of the Future: Issues and Consensus Building." Director Pittman was given the Association's first Excellence in Agricultural Law Award for his contributions to the Center and to the field of agricultural law in general.
Director Pittman and Staff Attorneys Shannon Mirus, Rusty Rumley and Elizabeth Rumley traveled to several areas in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana to present the GIPSA Workshops. Details are contained in the feature article above. They also traveled to Little Rock to meet with members of the Arkansas Cattlemen's Association in early October and with the Arkansas Farm Bureau in early November.
Staff attorney Shannon Mirus presented EPA's "New" Numeric Nutrient Water Quality Standard at the Arkanss Water Law and Policy Conference in Ferndale, AR on November 9, and Legal and Policy Issues for Landowners in Mississippi at the Mississippi Farm Bureau Annual Convention in Jackson on December 4.
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