agriculture definition

? ? In my prior post about the farmers markets in Telluride and Mountain Village, Colorado, I promised to compare and contrast those markets with the one in Jasper, Arkansas , my home town.  Both places are similar in some ways, dramatically different in others.  First, both are rural/nonmetropolitan by most ecological measures, e.g., population density and size.  Indeed, both have similar total populations-- San Miguel County just over 7000, and Newton County just over 8000.  Both are also mountain towns (San Juans of the Rockies on one hand, Ozarks on the other), which benefit from ecotourism.  In fact, both are amenity rich in terms of outdoor activities, but Telluride has many more "built" amenities, and is quite cosmopolitan culturally.  This distinction and the crowd each county attracts is reflected in the annual accommodation and food service sales for 2007:  $77 million in San Miguel County, $3.2 million in Newton County.  That and th...

As some of my recent posts ( here  and  here ) suggest, I've been thinking for some time about the booming farmers' market phenomenon in relation to the slow/local food movement and, in particular, how local--and affordable--the food at farmers' markets really is. Stall of hole foods farm, La Sal, Utah, at Market on the Plaza As a ruralist, I'm also interested in what the farmers' market phenomenon says about our connection to rural places and the extent to which rural economies benefit from it. This week I had the opportunity to visit two markets in southwest Colorado, one in the posh town of  Telluride  and the other in the equally posh (but more obviously nouveau riche and glitzy and less old West cowboyish) neighboring town of  Mountain Village .  In a two post-series, I am going to compare these markets with a newly established one in my hometown,  Jasper, Arkansas .  This first post will be dedicated to the Colorado markets.  High ...

The landmark case of Wickard v. Filburn , 317 U.S. 111 (1942), has been the subject of extensive discussion on Agricultural Law . Filburn has now drawn the attention of National Public Radio . I was interviewed in connection with a July 5, 2012, NPR broadcast that featured Filburn and its role in the Supreme Court's health care reform decision. I invite you to download the podcast of that interview . Better yet, simply enjoy the show right here:

(The following is cross-posted from the Ratio Juris blog. I'm grateful to Professor Jim Chen for inviting me to post it at this wonderful blog, which has many more readers than Ratio Juris!) At Crooked Timber this morning, John Quiggin draws our attention to a debate about producing and consuming �local food,� a debate in part driven by an ecological concern with �food miles.� One side of this debate is captured in the abstract from the article by Pierre Desrochers and Hiroku Shimizu (here associated with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University): �As modern food production and distribution becomes ever more complex and globalized, a �buy local� food movement has arisen. This movement argues that locally produced food is not only fresher and better tasting, but it is also better for the environment: Because locally produced food does not travel far to reach your table, the production and transport of the food expend less energy overall. The local food movement has even coin...

I am pleased to link to a very helpful resource developed through a partnership between the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Harvard Food Law Society . It is the Food Law & Policy Career Guide . "If you are a law student, emerging young professional, interested food policy advocate, or someone simply searching to learn more about what food policy entails, these resources from across the nation (and world) to help you find your next job, volunteer position, or internship in the world of food policy." Appreciation is expressed to  Emily Broad Leib , the Senior Clinical Fellow in the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation and Director of the Center's Food Law and Policy Clinic for her work on this guide and for allowing us to post it.

I know the association of urban ag/slow food/organic/locavore movement with all things virtuous has been going on for some time, but just because the movement has proved so self-congratulatory (and mostly bourgeois) didn't necessarily make rural farmers the "bad guys."  I figured that, more than anything, the slow/local/urban ag craze was, at worst, implying (if only to those too myopic to look beyond their own food needs) that large-scale farmers (and, by extension, rural communities and populations) were (becoming) obsolete.   But a story in the  New York Times  a few days ago left me wondering if the urban ag trend (the fruits of which I admit to regularly indulging from my suburban home in greater Sacramento, where  many posh farmers markets  surround me) also makes rural farmers look less virtuous, even a bit like "the enemy."  Kirk Johnson's  story  focused on what he called a new business model of farming, one marked by smaller-scale f...

In the last few weeks, there have been recurring, and sometimes wildly inaccurate news stories about the Environmental Protection Agency's "fly-overs." The bottom line is that the EPA sometimes uses planes to fly over large livestock operations such as feedlots to see whether there are violations of environmental laws, such as the improper discharge of animal waste into a waterway. The EPA also does periodic flyovers to check other businesses such as power plants. The aerial check is cheaper and is often the best way to see the full picture. The Washington Post covered the story in its article, Midwest ranchers, congressmen protest EPA flyovers that look for livestock waste problems. As noted in the Post article, some farmers and ranchers and their representatives in Congress have protested, and a bill was even proposed that would ban the flights over farms. Ranchers argue that it is intrusive, even "creepy" to have "big brother" watching.  I'd li...