Josie Dudzik is a PhD candidate in Nutrition and Dietetics at New York University and is a guest contributor to this blog. She was an intern in the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic during the summer of 2024. Background The conservation of aquatic species in the United States is largely regulated by two agencies; the National Oceanic…
Denae Romero is a law student at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law and is a guest contributor to this blog. She was an intern in the Harvard Law School Food Law and Policy Clinic during the summer of 2024. Passed over 100 years ago, the Packers and Stockyards Act (codified at 7 U.S.C. §§ 181-229) aims…
John Hershey is a law student at Widener Law Commonwealth and a guest contributor to this blog. Crop insurance programs continue to be a sticking point in Farm Bill negotiations. Farmers pay federally subsidized premiums to obtain crop insurance coverage from private insurers. Crop insurance protects revenues when prices fall or natural causes such as drought or flood reduce harvests….
Orly Levy is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Background The shift towards large-scale industrial animal farming has transformed the landscape of American farming over the past few decades. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) have out-competed smaller, family-owned farms, decreasing the number of livestock farmers in the US by…
Farm bill drafts have arrived—kinda, almost. At the beginning of May, Senator Stabenow, Chair of the Senate Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry Committee, released a summary and detailed Section-by-Section overview of the Senate’s proposed Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act of 2024. The House Agriculture Committee Chair GT Thompson also released a summary of their Farm Bill proposal, with full text…
Mike Orlando is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Approximately 44 million Americans live without ready access to healthy food. To help mitigate this issue, Congress created the USDA Healthy Food Financing Initiative (“HFFI”) as part of the 2014 Agricultural Act (commonly referred to as the farm bill). HFFI…
James Wyche is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. After growing up in Texas, I can confidently say that I know heat. Long weekends dedicated to baseball tournaments under the high summer sun routinely exhausted my energy. Before leaving to play, my mom always would remind me “to REMEMBER…
Jayce Jimenez is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. What comes to mind when you think of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)? As the name suggests, the IRA was aimed at curbing rapid inflation that occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the IRA is additionally and,…
Mike Orlando is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 14, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, head of the USDA, testified in front of the House Agriculture Committee (the “Ag Committee”). He urged the Ag Committee to act quickly to pass the next farm bill, noting that delays…
James Wyche is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. America’s Digital Evolution America’s development from an agrarian country to one of increasing technological sophistication has engendered fundamental economic and social changes. Since the dawn of the age of the internet near the end of the 20th century, society’s reliance…