March Round-Up

As March ends, staff at the National Agricultural Law Center continue to bring trusted research and information in agricultural and food law to stakeholders across the country. Outlined below are many of the new NALC resources from the month of March.

Webinars

High-Capacity Wells: A Survey of Groundwater Withdrawal Rights and Regulations: This webinar was held on March 17^th. Agricultural irrigation accounts for the single largest use of groundwater in the United States and serving this use often requires using high-capacity wells. Regulation of high-capacity wells is left largely to the separate states and oftentimes is not well-integrated with those states’ surface water regulations.  This webinar explored the various legal approaches governing the right to withdraw and groundwater generally, as well as the regulatory frameworks in place for groundwater withdrawals via high-capacity wells. It also discussed recent legal decisions and policy approaches that inform the evolving discussion regarding how these types of withdrawals might best be regulated. Find a recording of this webinar here.

Blog Posts

• Industrial Hemp Production Contracts
• The Clean Water Act, The Corps, and Section 404
• Lending for Livestock, Credit for Crops: UCC Agricultural Liens
• Hot Topics in Environmental Law: Recent Developments in 2021
• Legal Checkup on Checkoffs: R-CALF, States’ Beef Councils, and the Ongoing First Amendment Challenge to the Beef Checkoff
• Cleaning the Air: Maryland Court Finds State Must Regulate Gaseous Ammonia Under CWA
• Lending for Livestock, Credit for Crops: Statutory Agricultural Liens
• The Deal with Dicamba: Updates from the First Quarter of 2021

Outreach

• Senior Staff Attorney, Rusty Rumley, spoke to socially disadvantaged farmers through the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff about the legal aspect of the hemp industry on March 15^th, 2021.