Kipper Berven is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is a Farm Bill provision that profoundly impacts the health and wellness of millions of Americans. Today roughly 34 million Americans live in food-insecure households, and a recent survey by the U.S. Department of…
Robert Velazquez is a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and is a guest contributor to this blog. For many people the thought of performing back breaking manual labor in triple digit heat seems unfathomable, but for farmworkers harvesting America’s produce, it’s another day at the office. Farmworkers who spend most of their…
Robert Velazquez is a law student at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law and is a guest contributor to this blog. American agriculture is deeply reliant on foreign labor to meet market demands. Since the mid-20th century, the domestic supply of agricultural workers has continually shrunk causing farm employers to rely on temporary foreign workers on…
Luca Greco is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. Pesticides pose a fundamental threat to environmental justice communities around the country, not only in rural areas, but also in urban areas. While many might picture crop dusters and fields of corn when they think of pesticides, their widespread use…
Liz Turner is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 28th of this year, the USDA Equity Commission released an Interim Report, recommending steps the USDA should take to remedy existing disparities in its policies and programs and reconfigure the agency culture and systems that have perpetuated those…
Naima Drecker-Waxman is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. There is a long history of racial discrimination in access to and delivery of United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) programs. Under directives from President Biden and Congress, USDA formed the USDA Equity Commission to evaluate equity issues in USDA…
Emily Hatch is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On February 15, 2023, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its most recent budget baseline for “USDA Farm Programs,” which projects a ten-year baseline cost for the relevant farm bill programs of over $1.4 trillion (about $140 billion each fiscal…
Kaitlynn Dixon is a law student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University and a guest contributor to this blog. Organic farming was first developed in the early 1900s by agricultural researcher Sir Albert Howard, emphasizing the impact that preserving soil’s natural biome has on crop viability. As agriculture became more industrialized in the 1940s, relying heavily on chemical fertilizers…
Codi Coulter is a law student at Maryland Carey School of Law and guest contributor on this blog. A thriving local food system can improve the economy, the environment, and health, benefitting both consumers and producers. Local food is often sold directly to consumers, and an increased demand for local foods can stimulate jobs throughout the food system. In addition,…
Kipper Berven is a law student in the HLS Food Law & Policy Clinic and a guest contributor to this blog. On Tuesday, March 7th, two law students and two instructors from Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic traveled to Washington D.C., joining a student from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law to attend the Farmers for Climate…