agriculture definition

Considering the state of industrial agriculture, there�s not much to dislike about the locavore food movement.  However, as Nicole Civita explained in her excellent post about regulating the sale of home-grown foods , the movement is not without its own legal and policy challenges.  Add animals to the mix, and things get even more complicated.  This is particularly so when animals are raised specifically for slaughter and consumption.  The slaughter of animals for food has received much-deserved media attention lately, and we can expect to hear more about domestic horse slaughter and the handling and slaughter of downed livestock .  Here�s another term for your repertoire:  backyard slaughter .  Raising and slaughtering one�s own animals has officially reached hipster status , thanks in part to the popularity of backyard chickens ( Oprah! Martha! ) and Mark Zuckerberg�s year-long vow not to eat meat from animals he hasn�t personally slaughtered (a v...

The University of Arkansas School of Law will launch the Indigenous Food and Agriculture Initiative on Tuesday, Jan. 15. It will be the nation�s first law school initiative focusing on tribal food systems, agriculture and community sustainability. The initiative will draw on the nationally recognized expertise of LL.M. Alumna Janie Simms Hipp, who leaves her post as the senior adviser for tribal relations to USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack and on that of Stacy Leeds, currently the only Native American law school dean in the country. Janie will serve as director of the initiative and as visiting professor of law. �The National Congress of American Indians applauds the creation of this new initiative,� said Jefferson Keel, president of the organization, which is the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native tribal government organization in the United States. �Ms. Hipp accomplished many important goals during her time as senior adviser at USDA, and Dean Leed...

The Rodale Institute requested that some of the contributors to Agricultural Law serve as Guest Bloggers on their newly redesigned website and blog.  The Rodale Institute is a nonprofit research farm in Kutztown, PA, and their a website features articles on organic and sustainable food and farming.  Their audience is described as being primarily made up of farmers (established and beginning), agricultural professionals, and �deep consumers.� I love that last category. It references people who "rather than going to the grocery story, visit local farms to buy for their families."  Looking at the website, I suspect there are quite a few other categories of visitors as well.  Theirs is a nationally-focused site with around 60,000-70,000 visits per month. I did our first guest post for them, The Land That Heals , and it was published January 4, 2013 on the new Rodale website .  It addresses my reactions to the tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut.  ...

National Jurist just released its list of the Twenty-five Most Influential People in Legal Education , and the founder of Agricultural Law and the Jurisdynamics Network , Jim Chen, is one of those 25 people.  As National Jurist notes, Jim has "written extensively on legal education, including a look at student debt and what students can afford, and most recently on merit scholarship." Congratulations, Jim, for this recognition of your efforts to challenge and improve legal education.

Last night, Agricultural Law founder, Jim Chen , got my attention with a tweet and a link to the NY Times article that reported on Mark Lynas, the one-time foe of GMO use in agriculture and his startling endorsement of GM technologies.    New Shade of Green: Stark Shift for Onetime Foe of Genetic Engineering in Crops . Reading the article caused me to reflect on my own thoughts on GM crops. I find that typically, we tend to divide the world into two opposing camps, those for and against genetic engineering. The most reasonable path, however, may be somewhere in between. Here are my primary concerns about genetic engineering as it is currently regulated in the United States. U.S. laws allowing the patenting of life forms may have gone too far. The ownership of the genetic material in seed leads to property rights that spread beyond the original product through plant reproduction to the next generation by planting, volunteer germination, or drift, whether intentional or uninten...