Legal Niches

Toward New Models for the Scale and Practice of Agriculture, No. 4

Posted on October 04, 2020
Our first, second, and third posts in this series are, respectively, here, here, and here. ?Agribusiness lab breeds its few poultry lineages at the level of grandparent stock before shipping out the product to clientele around the world. The practice in effect removes natural selection as a self-correcting (and free) ecological service...

Toward New Models for the Scale and Practice of Agriculture, No. 3

Posted on April 10, 2018
Our first and second posts in this series are, respectively, here and here.?The logistics of a just, equitable, and healthy agricultural landscape here in the United States would remain a problem if Michael Pollanhimself, Wendell Berry, or better yet Fred Magdoff were appointed Secretary of Agriculture...

Toward New Models for the Scale and Practice of Agriculture, No. 2

Posted on April 05, 2018
Our first post, with an introduction to this series, is here. ?Dumping grain on another country is a classic maneuver in economic warfare. When a country?s borders are opened by force or by choice, by structural adjustment or by neoliberal trade agreement, when tariffs and other forms of protectionism are finally scotched, heavily subsidized multinational agribusinesses can flood the new market with commodities at prices less than their production costs...

Toward new models for the scale and practice of agriculture

Posted on April 02, 2018
Over the course of a month or two (perhaps longer), I?m going to occasionally post snippets from a handful of Rob Wallace?s rhetorically pungent, intellectually incisive, and politically powerful collection of essays in his book Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatchers on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science (Monthly Review Press, 2016)...

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Documentary on Dolores Huerta: ?Dolores?

Posted on March 28, 2018
Some readers?as viewers!?may be interested (assuming you?ve yet to see it) in the recent documentary on the remarkable and inspiring life of Dolores Huerta on PBS (Independent Lens): ?Dolores.?And should you have missed its earlier posting, here is my bibliography for ?César Chávez & the United Farm Workers ? and the Struggle of Farm Workers in the U...

Famine: History, Causes, and Consequences ? A Select Bibliography

Posted on March 24, 2018
My latest bibliography, on the history, causes, and consequences of famine, is here. Compilations with significant family resemblance: Beyond Inequality: Toward the Globalization of Welfare, Well-Being and Human FlourishingBeyond Capitalist Agribusiness: Toward Agroecology & Food JusticeEcological & Environmental Politics, Philosophies, and WorldviewsGlobal Distributive JusticeHealth: Law, Ethics & Social JusticeMarxism

Down on the Farm: Nostalgic Ideological Hegemony in the Service of Agribusiness, Big Data, and AI, or, Capitalist Agriculture and Country Music

Posted on March 24, 2018
?Agriculture Wars? By Nick Murray (March 12, 2018), for Viewpoint Magazine ?The town of Maricopa may be surrounded by Arizona desert, but a small plot of land near its northern border may qualify as the most closely studied piece of farmland our planet has ever produced...

?Animal Colonialism: The Case of Milk?

Posted on October 04, 2017
New article of interest: Mathilde Cohen, ?Animal Colonialism: The Case of Milk,? American Journal of International Law Unbound (September 2017) Volume 111: 267-271.[Being a vegan, and with a significant portion of my worldview best described as Marxist,* I?m predisposed to find the argument in this very short article congenial...

Ricardo Flores Magón, PLM, and the Labor Struggles of California Farmworkers

Posted on September 16, 2017
?Cipriano Ricardo Flores Magón (known as Ricardo Flores Magón; September 16, 1874 ? November 21, 1922) was a noted Mexican anarchist and social reform activist. His brothers Enrique and Jesús were also active in politics. Followers of the Magón brothers were known as Magonistas...

Rethinking Agricultural History

Posted on September 12, 2017
A comparatively short(!) new article I believe worthy of your attention: Nathan A. Rosenberg and Bryce Wilson Stucki, ?The Butz Stops Here: Why the Food Movement Needs to Rethink Agricultural History?Abstract?From the 1890s to the 1930s, rural Americans played a vital role in radical leftist politics...

Agricultural Hegemony and Farm Workers

Posted on July 19, 2017
          Patrick O'Donnell's recent posting of Marion Nestle's interview with a Western grower CEO and  attendant commentary, contributes greatly to understanding the irreconcilable differences between farm labor skills with the risk of agricultural enterprises facing decreasing labor shortages...

An Agribusiness Perspective on Farm Labor & Immigration

Posted on May 18, 2017
Migrant workers harvest corn on Uesugi Farms in Gilroy, California (2013). U.S. Department of Agriculture  At Food Politics, Marion Nestle shares an interview with Tom Nassif, the CEO of the Western Growers. ?Nassif represents this trade association for industrial agricultural producers in the West and Southwest...

     Several

Posted on April 21, 2017
     Several recent posts have focused on agriculture in Africa.  I applaud those posts.     Today, I received an e-mail from the African Journal of Food, Agriculture, Nutrition and Development (AJFAND) that publicized its newest issue -- a special issue on biofortification of staple crops for Africa...

Ruling finds California?s largest fruit grower collectively bargained in bad faith with the UFW

Posted on April 18, 2017
[Apologia: I realize all agriculture-newsworthy items don?t originate from California, but as I live in the state and our other bloggers are quiescent at the moment, I trust you can forgive me. And yet we might recall that California is ?positioned as the agricultural powerhouse of the United States,? as it ?leads all of the other states in farm income!?] ?Judge slams fruit grower over ?bad faith? bargaining with farmworkers? By Geoffrey Mohan for the Los Angeles Times, April 17, 2017 The state?s largest grower of peaches and other fruit bargained in bad faith with the United Farm Workers of America and wrongly tried to exclude as many as 1,500 employees from a collective bargaining agreement, a judge has ruled...

?African Arguments? series from Zed Books

Posted on April 17, 2017
This series of titles from Zed Books has several volumes directly and indirectly relevant to questions in international political economy and agriculture, should anyone be interested. I have a post with a bit more information over at Ratio Juris. [Please note: I am not being paid by Zed Books, I did not receive a (or any) free book(s) from the publisher, and I was not asked to promote the series...

Agricultural Labor & Affluent Consumers: Cacao Farming, Commodities, and Consumption

Posted on April 14, 2017
Drying cocoa beans in rural Ghana (Photo: Elke de Buh)?Before you eat that chocolate Easter egg, think about the people who produced it? By Simran Sethi for the Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2017 ?Just after Valentine?s Day, prices for cocoa plummeted...

Toward Agroecology & Food Justice

Posted on April 07, 2017
I?ve made a fair amount of additions to this bibliography: The Sullied Science & Political Economy of Hyper-Industrial Agriculture (Or: ?Toward Agroecology & Food Justice?). In a future post at the Agricultural Law blog I aim to provide an introduction to agroecology, providing several definitions as well as references (online and otherwise) to some of the best (assessed by my lights) literature on the subject...

U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy

Posted on April 06, 2017
In the hope of arousing abiding interest among those who?ve yet to read this work, what follows is from the informative if not provocative Foreword by James C. Scott to Bill Winders? The Politics of Food Supply: U.S. Agricultural Policy in the World Economy (Yale University Press, 2009):?The task Bill Winders sets himself is sharply etched but, at the same time, dauntingly ambitious...

The Moral & Political Economy of Poverty, Hunger, and Famine

Posted on April 03, 2017
Perhaps some readers of this blog may be interested in a ?suggested reading? list on the moral and political economy of poverty, hunger, and famine, cross-posted at Ratio Juris & Religious Left Law.

César E. Chávez: March 31, 1927 ? April 23, 1993

Posted on March 31, 2017
My bibliography for César Chávez & the United Farm Workers ? and the Struggle of Farm Workers in the U.S. is here.

NAFTA & Agriculture: Rhetoric, Posturing, Reality

Posted on March 31, 2017
Protesters in Mexico City hand out corn to workers and farmers in a march against spiraling food prices in 2007. Luis Acosta/Agence France-Presse ? Getty Images?Mexico?s bargaining chips with Trump: how about a corn boycott?? By Kate Linthicum for the Los Angeles Times, March 29, 2017?First domesticated here 10,000 years ago, corn is not only a staple of the Mexican diet, but also a symbol of Mexico itself...

The political economy of California agriculture

Posted on March 21, 2017
?Wages rise on California farms. Americans still don?t want the job.? Trump?s immigration crackdown is supposed to help U.S. citizens. For California farmers, it?s worsening a desperate labor shortage. By Natalie Kitroeff and Geoffrey Mohan for the Los Angeles Times, March 17, 2017 [?...

David A. Cleveland?s Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture (2014)

Posted on March 10, 2017
 Below is a substantial excerpt from the Introduction to David A. Cleveland?s Balancing on a Planet: The Future of Food and Agriculture(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2014). I hope it entices you to read the book, for while I have yet to finish, what I have read thus far and what I?ve peeked at in what?s to come, is verygood...

California?s chronic water shortage does not bode well for its agriculture

Posted on March 07, 2017
?Our wild, wet winter doesn?t change this reality ?California will be short of water forever?By Jay Famiglietti and Michelle Miro* for the Los Angeles Times, March 7, 2017[?.] All winter, Californians have been asking one question: Is the drought finally over? The federal monitor shows just a few lingering tan and yellow patches in Southern California, but for scientists, the beginning and end of drought conditions are exceptionally difficult to pinpoint...

An ?agrihood? in Detroit (an exemplum of the agroecological utopian praxis of ?democratization from below?)

Posted on February 23, 2017
A FB friend shared this encouraging news item on inhabitatfrom last year about the Michigan Urban Farming Initiative: ?America?s first urban ?agrihood? feeds 2,000 households for free:??When you think of Detroit, ?sustainable? and ?agriculture? may not be the first two words that you think of...

Agricultural & Food Law at Stanford

Posted on March 20, 2011
I was pleased to receive information on some of the exciting agricultural and food law activities at Stanford Law School from Professor Jay Mitchell. I have had the pleasure of corresponding with Jay regarding his innovative clinical work with food system clients and met him at the American Agricultural Law Association conference last fall in Omaha...

West Virginia College of Law: Agricultural Law Initiatives

Posted on March 14, 2011
One of our alumni from the LL.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law replied to my call for news regarding law school initiatives in agricultural & food law.  Alison Peck, who teaches at the West Virginia College of Law reported on a variety of innovative projects that she is involved in...

Farmer-Labor Connections in Wisconsin

Posted on March 12, 2011
I grew up on a small (by today's standards) dairy farm in Minnesota. Although my parents never ran for office, political discussions were commonplace and part of our every day family discourse.  They were proud members of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, the DFL...

Law School Work in Food & Agriculture

Posted on March 11, 2011
A couple weeks ago, I posted on the interesting food law work going on at Harvard -  work that is largely student generated and student centered.  I have contacted a number of colleagues that I happen to know are leading work in this area, and I hope to be receiving information on new classes, clinical and skills work, and at least one new center...

Food & Agriculture at Law Schools: Harvard Law School

Posted on February 26, 2011
As was reported in Food & Agriculture: New Trend in Higher Education, undergraduate academic programs have picked up on growing interest in agricultural & food policy. Law Schools are now joining the ranks of those captivated by issues involving our food system - and there are some fascinating projects and opportunities...

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