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ENVIRONMENTAL
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Directory of
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Agriculture Law: A Basic Overview
Agriculture includes soil preparation, seed planting, crop harvesting, gardening,
horticulture, viticulture, dairying, poultry, bee-raising, and ranching.
Generally, laws grouped under the heading "agricultural law"
relate to the production of the fruits of these activities as they are
carried out in a commercial setting. In a much broader sense agriculture
is concerned with al most every aspect of law. It is effected and impinged
upon by the laws of torts, contracts, labor law,
employment law, real property , securities law, will and trusts, and
environmental law.
There are numerous federal statutes that subsidize, regulate or otherwise
directly affect agricultural activity. Several focus on agricultural workers:
The Federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act provides
protection for migrant and seasonal agricultural workers (29
U.S.C. §§ 1802 et seq.). 42
U.S.C. §§ 1471 et seq. provides for financial assistance
to farmers and others for the construction or improvement of
farm housing and other agriculturally related purposes.
Some states have also passed statutes relating to agriculture production
and labor. For example, Arizona has enacted legislation granting agricultural workers
the right to organize and engage in collective bargaining activities. In order
to understand the present state of agriculture law -it is necessary to unerstand
the hisptorical perspective in which it evolved.
Agriculture And The Government - A Historical Perspective
Throughout
American history there has been a tradition of government support for and
involvement with agriculture. This survey begins with important
developments in the late 18th century. The federal
government played a critical role in opening millions of acres of public
lands to agricultural settlement and in funding necessary transportation
systems. Following the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812,
Congress granted tracts of public land to veterans, thus promoting
settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains.
The Ordinance of 1785 established a plan for disposing of western
lands, and the Land Act of 1796 authorized the sale of single sections
(640 acres). While the Land Law of 1820 discontinued extensions of
credit, it did reduce the price per acre from $2 to $1.25. The Preemption
Act of 1841 provided for the sale of previously settled public lands to original settlers ("squatters") at $1.25 per
acre.
The first of a series of Homestead Acts was signed into law in 1862. U.S.
patents for 160 acre tracts were given to homesteading farmers who complied with statutory
requirements. Homesteading ended, for practical purposes, in 1935 with the closing of
the public lands to settlement following passage of the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934.
In 1827 and 1828, Congress made land grants to
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Alabama to fund the construction of canal
systems. Every other section of land for a certain distance on each side
of the canal route was granted in checkerboard fashion and the granted
lands sold by the canal authority to finance construction. Not only did
this open land to settlement, but construction of essential transportation systems was funded. Starting in the 1850s the same
approach was used to finance the construction of thousands of miles of
railroad track and to thereby open land west of the Mississippi River to
agricultural settlement. For related internatioal environmental problems
see:
International
Environmental Law: Main Page |
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Basic Sources of
Agricultural Law
Federal Material
Federal Agency Regulations
- Code of Federal Regulations: 7
C.F.R. - Agriculture
Federal Judicial Decisions
Federal Material
State Material
Other References
Other
Topics Dealing with Particular Activities or Business Sectors; See
also: Food
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and Drugs
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Code Corporation A national index to hundreds of municipalities' codes.
Municipal
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National
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Conference of State Legislatures WWW
StateSearch
via National Association for State Information
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The Embassy Page
European Union
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- Find current events books on "Agricultural Law Journals" at buy.com
- "Agricultural Law Journals" information from Pro2Net!
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- Agricultural Law Press
- Publisher of newsletters, books and textbooks on agricultural law. Includes sample copy of biweekly newsletter.
- More like this: LookSmart category - Agricultural Law Journals
- AgLaw
- Magazine covering legal issues in agriculture published by an Illinois law firm. Back issues available from February 1996.
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Table of
Authorities
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
3
In 1839 Congress appropriated $1,000 to the Patent
Office for collecting agricultural statistics, conducting agricultural studies,
and distributing seeds. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was
created in 1862. In 1889 the powers of the Department were enlarged and it
became the eighth executive department of the federal government. The
Commissioner of Agriculture became the Secretary of Agriculture and agriculture
became the only industry to have a direct voice at the Cabinet level.
In the middle of the 19th century Congress took steps to
encourage states to establish colleges. The Morrill Act of 1862 authorized
grants of federal public lands to states to fund the establishment of "land
grant" colleges. In 1890, a second Morrill Act authorized separate land
grant colleges for Blacks and 17 were established. The 1862 schools, and to a
lesser extent the 1890 schools, became known as agricultural colleges. The
primary charge to the 1890 schools was to train teachers.
Because 19th century agriculture had no corporate giants
capable of sponsoring significant plant and animal science research, support
developed for government funded agricultural experiment stations. The first
station opened in Connecticut in 1875 and later that year the California
Agricultural Experiment Station was founded at the University of California. It
was not until the Hatch Act of 1887, however, that federal grants were
authorized to support research. Hatch Act funds still flow to experiment
stations.
The Cooperative Extension Service, a partnership of
federal, state and local governments, was authorized in 1914 in the
Smith‑Lever Act. Today, extension professionals at the county level
continue to provide practical education to the people in agriculture, home
economics and other subjects.
In a further effort to promote agricultural settlement,
Congress enacted the Reclamation Act of 1902 which authorized the great dam and
canal systems that were to bring flourishing irrigated agriculture to the 17
western states. Designed to promote settlement of small farms, the Act required
that a recipient of project water live on the farm, which was not to exceed 160
acres in size. The failure of the Bureau of Reclamation to enforce the acreage
limit and the Congressional response 80 years later are discussed in Ch. 11
infra.
State and federal regulatory progra s designed to protect
farmers from sharp practicegby buyers, warehouses, and shippers emerged in a
latter part of the 19th and the early years of the 2 centuries. Illinois took
the lead in the 1870s y enacting
4 GOVERNMENT & AGRICULTURE Ch. l
"Granger Laws" designed to regulate rail rates
arid public commodity warehouses.
A sampling of federal laws regulating trade practices
illustrates the scope of the concerns of the Congress: the first animal
quarantine law in 1884; the Meat Inspection Act in 1890; the Pure Food and Drug
Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906; the Federal Insecticide Act in 1911;
the Seed Importation Law and the Plant Quarantine Act in 1912; the U.S.
Warehouse Act and U.S. Grain Standards Act in 1916; the Packers and Stockyards
Act in 1921; the Commodities Exchange Act in 1922: the Grain Futures Act in
1924; the Plant Patent Act and the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act in
1930.
In these same years, other important pieces of agricultural
legislation emerged from the Congress. Agricultural cooperatives were given
important, but limited, exemptions from the federal antitrust laws, first in
1914 in § 6 of the Clayton Act, and then more significantly in 1922 in the
Capper‑Volstead Act. The Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 authorized
establishment of the 12 Farm Credit Banks, the beginnings of the Farm Credit
System. In 1923, the Agricultural Credits Act authorized the 12 Federal
Intermediate Credit Banks. By 1933, the structure of the Farm Credit System was
in place with specialized banks and associations designed to meet the credit
needs of producers and agricultural cooperatives.
This recital of developments should not be read to suggest
that all was well for American agriculture prior to the Great Depression, soon
to arrive in the 1930s. Boom and bust cycles were well known, droughts
and insect infestations arrived and depart
ed, and farmers were, as they are today, price takers, both in selling their
products and buying their inputs. Yet, there had been good years for
agricultural in the latter part of the 19th and the early part of the 20th
centuries. The political climate was still favorable and farm families tended to
be self sufficient, producing much of what was needed to sustain livestock and
household.
However, agriculture was soon to be caught in the whirlwind
of the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, and a complex world of
economic regulation presided over by labyrinthine federal administrative
agencies. And, farming was about to undergo great changes with unprecedented
yields made possible by advances in plant breeding and increased reliance upon
fertilizers and, eventually, pesticides. The lifestyles of farmers and ranchers
would change too, as they were converted to many of the ways of their city
brothers and sisters. Increases in spending for family goods and production
inputs were to add complexity to the lives of agriculturalists whose cash flow
was not always adequate to support such habits.
II. ECONOMIC REGULATION
A. The Depression Era
The impact of the Great Depression on federal farm policy
is of monumental importance. Had it not been for the extraordinary distress
experienced by agriculture during this period, the option of massive ongoing
federal intervention might never have been explored. Prior to the 1930s, there
had been relatively little economic regulation of agriculture. The New Deal
legislative emphasis
DRAFTING CALIFORNIA REVOCABLE LIVING TRUST
THIRD EDITION
Edited by CEB Attorneys
Carol Sanders
Supervising Attorney
Mary Gerber • Robert Nakatani • Hale Kronenberg
OCTOBER 2000 UPDATE
Project Manager
Jeffrey A. Dennis‑Strathmeyer
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do EB
CONTINUING EDUCATION OF THE BAR • CALIFORNIA Berkeley,
California
For update information call 1‑800‑CEB‑3444
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