Publications: Commercial Transactions
State Grain Grading Laws & Regulations
Laura DiGiulio, Research Fellow, National Agricultural Law Center
Rusty Rumley, Senior Staff Attorney, National Agricultural Law Center
Elizabeth Rumley, Senior Staff Attorney, National Agricultural Law Center
An important factor in the sale of grain is quality. Grain is routinely sampled and inspected, often several times before reaching its end use, on a wide array of criteria depending on the type and use of the grain. State standards for inspection vary greatly, as does the implementation of the federal grain standards by state. This publication provides summaries of the state laws implementing some form of grain inspection approach. Download this article. Posted 8/29/19
Factsheet: Arkansas Grain Warehouse Laws
Jessica Fritts & Elizabeth Rumley, The National Agricultural Law Center
Arkansas is one of thirty states that have laws in place to regulate grain warehouses within the state. As such, a warehouse operator may choose to be regulated under the Arkansas state laws or the federal laws. This factsheet explains and discusses the possibilities for warehouse licensing within the state of Arkansas. Download this factsheet. Posted 6/1/15
Factsheet: Grain Warehouse Laws
Jessica Fritts & Elizabeth Rumley, The National Agricultural Law Center
Warehouses are normally involved in the storage of grain and other farm commodities. Depending on the location, warehouses may be licensed with the federal government, the applicable state government, or not licensed at all. This factsheet explains and discusses the possibilities for warehouse licensing within the United States. Download this factsheet. Posted 6/1/15
State Regulation of Grain Sales & Storage
Jessica Fritts, Elizabeth Rumley, The National Agricultural Law Center
State governments have set up different statutory schemes regulating grain dealers and warehouses. Warehouses are involved in the storage of grain, while a grain dealer is a person or entity involved in buying, receiving or exchanging grain from the grower. For these businesses, regulatory requirements vary greatly from state to state, ranging from no regulation at all to very significant regulation, including licensing, bonding, statutory liens, and civil and criminal sanctions.This factsheet is a companion piece to a center compilation with citations to specific statutes (found here). It provides a large scale overview of how states have chosen to address this issue, and may be helpful to those interested in making, changing, or simply understanding state policy regarding these businesses. Download this factsheet. Posted 1/13/15
Hedge to Arrive Contracts: Futures or Forwards
Jayashree B. Gokhalé Senior Attorney, Office of Disciplinary Affairs National Association of Securities Dealers, Inc.
Although the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) reformulated the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), Congress chose to preserve the distinctions between agricultural commodities and all others, leaving the pre-CFMA provisions largely intact. This means that the pre-CFMA statutes and case law interpreting them continue to apply with full force to transactions involving agricultural commodities, and the agricultural markets seem therefore to have escaped the statutory modernization brought by the CFMA to the financial derivatives markets. Since the middle 1990s, transactions involving Hedge to Arrive Contracts (HTAs) between producers and grain merchants have sparked controversy as well as litigation. The central question arising with respect to HTA transactions is whether they are futures contracts to which the CEA applies, or whether they are excluded from the CEA as forward contracts. This article addresses this question by examining the case law surrounding HTA contracts and the CFTC’s treatment of HTAs, focusing on the analysis used to categorize HTAs as futures or forward contracts. Download this article Posted: April 21, 2005
Commercial Laws in the United States of America Relating to Bailments
Drew L. Kershen Earl Sneed Centennial Professor of Law University of Oklahoma College of Law
This article provides an introduction to the law of bailment with an emphasis on commercial bailments. While this article has tried to provide the reader with a solid understanding of bailment law, it has not attempted to provide a detailed exposition of every legal issue that has arisen. More significantly, this article has not attempted to provide a discussion of the many cases that have addressed specific bailment law issues. At times the footnotes cite case decisions, but the article focuses on the statutory provisions of state and federal laws relating to bailment. Download this article. Posted: Aug. 4, 2004