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Welcome from the Director
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
 The past two months at the Center have been productive and intense, with a number of major projects completed and initiated at the Center. I'd like to mention a few of these and say a special thanks to the members of the staff who continue to work hard to further the Center's mission as the nation's leading source and provider of agricultural and food law research and information.
One major accomplishment is that the Case Law Indexes for each Reading Room have been completed and updated through July 31, 2008. This means that the overwhelming majority of federal and state case law for nearly three dozen agricultural and food law subjects, reported and unreported, is now freely available to the nation's agricultural community. The Center will continue to provide written summaries of the cases in each index and will update the indexes as new cases are decided. The Center has also embarked on an ambitious initiative to provide digitized versions of the thousands of legal publications contained in Drew Kershen's Agricultural Law Bibliography. You can expect to see hundreds of articles digitized between now and the next e-newsletter, so stay tuned on that front.
In addition, the Center continues to compile and digitize state laws pertinent to agriculture, including agritourism legislation, raw milk statutes, and states' agricultural liens. A final area to mention is that the Center significantly enhanced the Congressional Research Service Report Index to make that component of the website more user-friendly. Thanks to those of you who suggested that the Index be expanded - we're glad to have received the input and to help provide an improved service to the nation's agricultural community.
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. Thanks to all of you who have offered suggestions in recent weeks and months. The feedback we've received has been very valuable.
Best regards,
Center Director |
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Environmental Law in Agriculture --
A New Reading Room
While many aspects of environmental law as it relates to agriculture are covered in the various reading rooms on the Center site, up until now there has not been a reading room devoted specifically to the topic. From the storage, use and disposal of pesticides to helping maintain a clean atmosphere, and from hazardous waste storage and disposal to protecting the water we use for everything from drinking to irrigation, environmental law issues are essential to agricultural law. As a result, the Center recently constructed and posted its new Environmental Law Reading Room. The room contains an overview article and a listing of and links to major statutes and regulations. It also contains an extensive case law index, relevant Center publications and important materials from many government agencies, as well as many other resources that will be helpful- from both a legal and a practical standpoint- to attorneys, researchers and farmers alike. As with all our reading rooms, we welcome comments and suggestions on resources and research areas that could be pursued to enhance and supplement the information provided in the room. |
Congressional Research Service Reports
Get Organized
In response to several Center website users' suggestions that the CRS Reports related to agriculture and food issues be expanded and enhanced to make the section more user-friendly, staff attorney Elizabeth Springsteen has updated and reorganized the subject index with efficient research and easier topic identification as the main goals of the project. The reports were reclassified from the previous categories into new topics that more closely match and identify the subject of the report. Further division by multiple sub-topics in many of the categories was chosen to help the researcher to specifically pinpoint topics relevant to individual areas of interest. Some new topics, such as Sustainable and Organic Farming, were added to the index, while others were rearranged to reflect the interrelationship of several topics. |
Research Associate Publishes Article on Renewable Fuels Standards
Pursuant to the Federal Clean Air Act (CAA), Congress required the Environmental Protection Agency to promulgate regulations implementing a renewable fuels program. These regulations are commonly referred to as the Renewable Fuels Standards (RFS). The RFS outline the total volume of renewable fuel that must be blended each year as part of the domestic fuel supply. In addition, CAA allows states to petition EPA for waiver of the RFS in the event of severe economic or environmental harm, or inadequate domestic supply of renewable fuel. Renewable Fuels Standard Provisions Under the Clean Air Act: Overview and Recent Developments by Research Associate Eric Foy discusses the RFS and addresses the recent petition for waiver of the RFS submitted by the state of Texas. Special update - On Thursday, August 7, 2008, the EPA rejected a waiver of the federal ethanol production mandate requested by Texas. |
Making Legal Research Faster and Easier -
States'Agritourism Statutes
 A new compilation of states' agritourism statutes is now available in the Agritourism Reading Room. Currently, there are eighteen states in the United States that have enacted statutes specifically addressing agritourism. One of the most comprehensive statutes is the Kansas Agritourism Promotion Act. This legislation created a registration of agritourism operations within the state, created a tax credit to help offset the cost of liability insurance, and offered increased liability protections for agritourism operators similar to that offered by recreational use statutes. Many state statutes are not as wide-ranging, including a simple definition of agritourism, zoning requirements or creating promotional board for agritourism. This compilation demonstrates that many state legislatures are recognizing the importance of agritourism within their local economies. States' Agritourism Statutes by staff attorney Shannon Mirus provides the statutory text of each of the eighteen states' agritourism statutes. The text for each state is available by selecting a state from an interactive map of the U.S. As the popularity of agritourism enterprises continues to grow, other states are considering legislation that will offer similar protections. Several states have pending legislation, and these new statutes will be added to the compilation as they are passed.
The Great Case Law Roundup
Over the summer staff attorneys for the Center have completed the compilation of Case Law Indexes for the 34 Reading Rooms currently posted on the Center website, as well as several indexes to be included in reading rooms currently under construction such as the Renewable Energy and Water Law reading rooms. Staff attorneys Paul Goeringer and Rusty Rumley have worked diligently throughout the summer to complete all the indexes and to update all existing indexes to July 31, 2008. Now that the indexes are completed, future staff attorneys will update the indexes on a regular basis and will seek to include older cases that are still relevant in each particular field. This intensive effort implements a primary goal of the Center to provide a comprehensive and up-to-date compilation of legal decisions involving agriculture and food in the United States and the world. The Center's will continue its commitment to summarize all the cases listed in these case law indexes with the ultimate goal of having all cases summarized. These efforts will be profiled in upcoming issues of the newsletter. | |
Coming Soon . . . A Fully Dynamic Agricultural Law Bibliography
The Center has embarked upon the ambitious task of digitizing the over 7000 entries in Professor Drew Kershen's Agricultural Law Bibliography, landmark scholarship to agricultural law practitioners and researchers for decades. Once digitized, the articles will be linked from the Bibliography on the Center website so that researchers throughout the nation and the world will have access to current and historical publications in agricultural and food law.
Most of the over 7000 articles were originally published in scholarly journals and professional newsletters, so the first step in the project has been to contact the editors of those publications to seek their permission to digitize and republish the articles. Following editorial permission, individual authors have been and will be contacted for permission to publish their article(s). In the past two months, the Center has secured republication permission from publishers and authors for approximately 1000 articles. This process will continue, but web site users can expect to see hundreds of these articles to be downloaded to the site over the next few weeks.
Given the vast number of articles from the American Agricultural Law Association's Agricultural Law Update included in the Bibliography and because the Center already publishes archive issues of the Update (1998 through 2007), the Center has digitized issues of the Update going back to the inaugural issue published in 1985. These digitized volumes will be added to the AgLaw Reporter section of the website and those articles listed in the Bibliography will be linked from there.
This project helps further the Center's mission as the nation's leading source of agricultural and food law research and information and operates specifically in conjunction with the USDA National Agricultural Library's mission of "advancing access to global information for agriculture." The Center shares a long-standing formal relationship with the National Agricultural Library.
To help expedite this process, if any author or journal wishes to give permission to republish any articles listed in the Bibliography, please contact Research Assistant Misti Sharp via email at mdc02@uark.edu or by phone at 479-387-2043. |
Center to Participate in ABA 2008 Farm Bill Panel
On September 10, the American Bar Association will host a discussion on the Commodity and Conservation titles of the 2008 Farm Bill. The discussion will held at the ABA headquarters in Washington, D.C., but will also be available nationwide via teleconference. Harrison Pittman, Center Director, will moderate the panel, which includes Dennis Nuxoll and Mike Mcleod. Mr. Nuxoll is the Director of Governmental Affairs for American Farmland Trust and will lead the discussion on the Conservation Title. Mr. McLeod of McLeod, Watkinson, & Miller has been in practice since 1967, specializing in food and agricultural law and legislation. As counsel and legislative representative of many of the nation's top food and agricultural organizations, he has written and spoken extensively on agricultural law matters. The event is being offered by the ABA Administrative Law and Regulatory Practice Group, Agriculture Committee. For additional information regarding this Farm Bill discussion, please contact Jenny Abreu at the American Bar Association, at AbreuJ@staff.abanet.org. |
Outreach - Conventions, Presentations, and Meetings
Staff attorney Marne Coit gave a presentation on contract issues in direct marketing in the U.S. Virgin Islands as part of a SARE-funded grant entitled "Trade, Tenure, and Tourism in the U.S. Virgin Islands: Understanding the Policy Framework That Will Increase Sustainable Agriculture." The purpose of the initial phase of the grant was to identify resource and policy barriers to connecting local farmers with the agritourism industry on the islands. The second phase of the grant is to launch a pilot project in which a few culinary herbs will be selected and sold directly from farmers to area restaurants. Marne's presentation focused on issues that may arise when farmers sell directly to hotels or restaurants, as well as issues that both farmers and buyers should consider before entering into a formal agreement.
Center librarian Sally Kelley attended the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in Portland, Oregon, in July. Ms. Kelly attended programs on various technologies, reference resources, government resources, among other topics. The American Association of Law Libraries was founded in 1906 to promote and enhance the value of law libraries to the legal and public communities, to foster the profession of law librarianship, and to provide leadership in the field of legal information. | |
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