Pop Quiz-2015
Pop Quiz… Name the only segment of the economy with a division of government devoted to it. The answer is agriculture. From the regulation of food preparation to the use of food aid as a foreign policy tool, agricultural and the laws surrounding it impacts all of us whether we like to admit it or not.
The term agricultural law may not as common as personal injury law or divorce law , but make no mistake, agriculture and the law are forever intertwined. It naturally follows that where government is, so will be the lawyers advocating for their client. Much like a farmer, an agricultural lawyer in rural Iowa has to know a little bit about of lot of things related to agricultural law and be willing to know when it is time to get a dedicated specialist. This column will touch on the various segments of agricultural law trends and identify the potential impact on members of the northeast Iowa farm community.
Estate planning, business planning, government farm policy and taxation readily come to mind as legal issues facing the farm community. However, food safety regulations, interpretation of federal pesticide laws, land use regulation decisions and foreign food aid policy have an impact on our local community, often time without knowledge until far after the decisions have been made. For example, one decision by the Supreme Court applied the government’s right of eminent domain to allow a city to take a private citizen’s land and after paying for it, turn the seized property over to another private citizen who put it to use for profit. In the struggle between expanding urban population centers and agricultural land owners, this precedent could be used to the detriment of land owners.