Our next webinar (October 21) will be Opening a Craft Beer Brewery: Laws & Considerations. Special thanks to the Craft Beer Attorney, Candace L. Moon, for taking time to share her expertise with us for that program. Our November webinar will focus on a year-in-review of top developments in 2020. We’ll skip a December program, but pick back up in January with a post-election preview of agricultural law and policy with Hunt Shipman, Principal and Director for Cornerstone Government Affairs.

Center Director

In recent years, the NALC and Center for Agricultural Law & Taxation (CALT) at Iowa State University have collaborated on agricultural taxation and estate planning projects, primarily conducted via the NALC’s national Research Fellowship program. However, we’re excited to announce plans to expand this partnership to add a full-time attorney to assist in providing research and information activities in the areas of farm tax, business, and estate planning. The work products will be available to agricultural attorneys, tax professionals, policy makers, agribusinesses, and producers.

The materials will educate agricultural constituents on the most up-to-date laws, cases, and regulations impacting planning, and provide practical resources for implementation. The work product will be disseminated broadly through the CALT and NALC websites, monthly CALT Brief newsletters, Iowa State’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development publications, and social media. CALT provides timely, objective, unbiased information to producers, professionals, and agribusinesses concerning the application of important developments in agricultural law and taxation at the federal and state levels and serves as a primary source of professional educational training in agricultural law and taxation.

To learn more about the NALC’s national network of partnership, visit our Partners page here.

The Center is excited to welcome Micah Brown and Sarah Catherine Copper on board as new staff attorneys!

Micah, born and raised in Benton, Arkansas, earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Central Arkansas before graduating cum laude with his Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas School of Law. He began working for the Center as a Research Fellow during his second year of law school and joined full time after graduating in May of 2020. At the Center, his primary areas of research are finance and credit, commercial transactions and secured transactions.

Sarah Catherine grew up in east Tennessee and earned her Bachelor of Science in Food Science at Auburn University before obtaining a Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas School of Law in 2020. She is currently working towards her LL.M in Food and Agricultural Law at the University of Arkansas. At the Center, Sarah Catherine's primary areas of research are food safety and food labeling.

A date has been set for the eighth annual Mid-South Agricultural & Environmental Law Conference! The conference will be held June 11, 2021 at the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in Memphis, Tennessee with a "Beer & BBQ" reception at Rendezvous the night before. Find more information on the conference here.

If you'd like to receive email notifications for next year's conference, email our Communications Coordinator, Sarah Cato. 

To help honor Scott's legacy, his friends have created the Scott E. Fancher Agricultural Law Research Fellowship. This Fellowship will be available to eligible law students annually and will be devoted exclusively to furthering objective legal research and information activities relevant to the nation's row crop agriculture industry, including federal crop insurance, federal commodity and conservation programs, wetlands issues, pesticide regulation, and similar areas. Applications are now open. Find details on how to apply here.

Our Research Fellow program employs highly qualified law students from across the country, and it continues to grow with the recent hiring of four new fellows. The NALC currently works with 18 Research Fellows from 14 different law schools in 12 states who continue to help update and produce resources on our website and with our partners.

The most recent contributions from our Research Fellows are:

To read about our current Research Fellows, click here.

Our most recent webinar featured Ross Pifer, Director of the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, who discussed Right to Repair Statutes. With the extensive technology embedded in today’s farm equipment, legal questions arise as to a farmer’s ability to perform routine maintenance and repairs on their machinery. Right to Repair statutes have been pursued as a means to ensure that agricultural producers have certain rights and legal protection to engage in this maintenance and repair. In this webinar, Ross provided an overview of Right to Repair statutes, discussed the current status of legislation and more. Find a recording of this webinar here.

In August, Peggy Kirk Hall, Associate Professor in Agricultural and Resource Law the Ohio State University, joined us for a webinar on agritourism. Agritourism has been on the rise in the U.S. with income tripling between 2002 and 2017. Together with the agritourism industry’s continued growth and prospects, however, there has been an evolution of laws and legal issues affecting operators. Peggy and her colleagues Eric Barrett and Rob Leeds, Extension Educators for Ohio State University Extension, discussed opportunities in agritourism today and the legal challenges the industry faces, both from COVID-19 as well as other legal perspectives. A recording of this webinar can be found here.

Our July webinar featured Brook Duer, Staff Attorney at the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law, who presented "Agricultural District Programs: The First 50 Years. Will They Survive Another 50?" In this webinar Brook took a look at the development of agricultural district programs, their benefits, which states have enacted these programs, and discuss the future of these programs as we enter the 2020's. Find a recording of this webinar here.

Later this month, we will host a webinar discussing the legal landscape for craft beer breweries. Craft beer is a growing market across the United States. According to the Brewers Association, the craft beer market made $29.3 billion in sales in 2019, a 6% growth from the previous year. Although the new market is exciting, it can be difficult to navigate legally. In this webinar, Candace L. Moon, owner and partner of The Craft Beer Attorney, will discuss the legal considerations for opening a craft brewery and how entrepreneurs and attorneys can navigate them. This webinar will be October 21 at noon EST. Find details and registration for this webinar here.

Our November webinar will feature our very own Center Director Harrison Pittman and Staff Attorney Brigit Rollins. Brigit and Harrison will wrap up 2020 with "A Year in Review: Top Ten Ag Law Developments of 2020." This year has been full of new developments and rapid changes, both in the world at large and in the agricultural law arena. This webinar will give an overview of the top ten agricultural law developments in 2020, featuring topics such as checkoff litigation, pesticide litigation, isues specifically related to COVID-19, and much more. This webinar will be November 18th at noon EDT. Find registration and more information for this webinar here.

We will be kicking off the new year with a webinar discussing agricultural law an policy post-2020 elections with Hunt Shipman, Principal and Director for Cornerstone Government Affairs. In this webinar, Hunt will analyze agricultural policy and lawmaking in light of the 2020 election results. He will cover issues such as implications for the next Farm Bill, international trade and much more. This webinar will be January 13 at noon EST. Find details and registration for this webinar here.

As part of its mission, the Center continues to deliver webinars, articles, fact sheets and state compilations on numerous agricultural and food law topics. These resources are free to the public and serve as a research tool for both attorneys and non-attorneys.

For example, in August we published Facing Farm Financial Stress: An Overview of the Bankruptcy Option, a bulletin series discussing Chapter 12 bankruptcy. Authored in partnership with Peggy Kirk Hall, Chris Zoller, David Marrison and Hannah Scott at The Ohio State University Extension, this series walks producers through each stage of the bankruptcy process. From first considerations, to court preparation, to recovery, it takes a look at the entire life-cycle of a farm bankruptcy.

Also in August, Ellen Essman, a collaborator with the NALC at the Ohio State University Agricultural & Resource Law Program, authored Innovative State Approaches to Hemp Regulations Under the 2018 Farm Bill. Even with the 2018 Farm Bill requirements for hemp production, there is room for states to innovate. This paper focuses on how they have done so, summarizing the unique aspects of state hemp programs that go beyond the USDA's minimum requirements.

Other new and updated resources from this quarter included:

We have kept our Ag & Food Law Blog up to date with Daily Updates, as well as weekly posts about current issues in agricultural and environmental law. Our weekly blog posts from this past quarter are outlined below.

Despite the recent pandemic making travel impossible for Center staff this past quarter, our researchers have still managed to provide outreach to stakeholders across the nation in the form of podcasts, webinars and more. You can see some examples of this outlined below. If you're interested in learning more about any of the topics below, or in having Center staff present at a conference or webinar you're sponsoring, please contact us.