publication archive: law
May 15, 2013
Keeping the Family Informed: Estate and Succession Planning
A prior article, "Updating your Estate and Succession Plan" discussed why a prior estate plan might not produce the results you expected due to law changes. This article discusses the reaction your heirs might have if they only learn of your plans at the reading of the will.Posted by Gary Hoff Permalink Tweet
May 14, 2013
Supreme Court Decision in Monsanto Case
Earlier this year the Supreme Court heard arguments in a patent law case pertaining to Monsanto's Round Up Ready technology. The unanimous decision delivered Monday May 13, 2013 upheld a lower court's decision against Indiana farmer Vernon Bowman.Posted by A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
May 8, 2013
Updating your Estate and Succession Plan
The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA) addressed many of the tax issues concerning taxpayers. ATRA made permanent many of the tax provisions that were scheduled to expire. For example, it provided a permanent exemption amount for the alternative minimum tax (AMT) and, more importantly, it indexed it for inflation.Posted by Gary Hoff Permalink Tweet
March 29, 2013
Illinois Farmland Assessments - Current Issues and Considerations
For property tax purposes, Illinois assesses farmland on the basis of its "agricultural use" value rather than its "auction block" or market value. The agricultural use value is affected by the expected income from farming. The income potential in turn varies by soil productivity, productivity, and also changes as costs and prices evolve through time. To help dampen the impact of changes in farm incomes, the law "caps" the annual rate at which farmland assessments can change from year to year at 10% of its previous value. However, there is an emerging technical problem in the way the 10% cap functions, given the special historical context of farmland assessments in Illinois. A reasonable legislative solution would be to retain the "10% cap" but to provide a different answer to the question ... "10% of what?". The following paragraphs elaborate the purposes of the farmland assessment act, the calculation of agricultural use value, how the 10% cap currently works, the historical context that has created an unintended consequence of the 10% cap, and how the problem could be fixed by amending the farmland assessment law.Posted by Bruce J. Sherrick and Donald L. Uchtmann Permalink Tweet
February 22, 2013
Supreme Court Hears Oral Argument in Ag Biotech Patent Case
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in what could be a landmark intellectual property law case involving patented seeds--Bowman v. Monsanto. A prior farmdoc daily posting provided background information on this case that has been making its way through the federal courts.Posted by A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
January 30, 2013
Successful Legal Challenge to Renewable Fuel Standard Likely to Have Minimal Long-Term Impact on Biofuels
The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, commonly referred to as EISA, amended the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by mandating specific quantities and types of renewable transportation fuels for each year--known as the yearly "applicable volume." The applicable volume for a particular fuel (conventional biofuel, advanced biofuel, cellulosic biofuel, biomass-based diesel) determines the quantity fuel refiners, importers and blenders much purchase each year. The below graph illustrates the statutory legal requirements for renewable transportation fuels under the RFS.Posted by Jody M. Endres and A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
January 9, 2013
Selling a Farm With Unharvested Crops
Selling a farm with unharvested crops presents some unique tax issues. The tax rules today may provide the farmer with far greater advantages than the rules that existed back in 1953 when the Supreme Court first ruled on the tax treatment of the sale of farmland with standing crops, but care must be taken to assess the impact of the tax rules and structure the sale transaction to minimize the tax costs of the sale.Posted by Marc Lovell Permalink Tweet
December 13, 2012
A Move Towards a More Fair Division: Envisioning a New Illinois Fence Act
Largely unchanged since its initial passage in 1819, the Illinois Fence Act provides that adjoining landowners ". . . shall make and maintain a just proportion of the division fence between them[.]" When the legislature drafted the statute in the early 1800s, land use patterns in Illinois looked quite different than today. Specifically, more landowners had cattle and sheep roaming their land. Starting in 1950, the number of farms in Illinois with livestock grazing has declined, with dramatic reductions in the 1960s and 1970s. As shown below, this trend continues.Posted by A. Bryan Endres and Lisa R. Schlessinger Permalink Tweet
November 30, 2012
Supreme Court Reviewing Important Ag Biotech Patent Case
The US Supreme Court receives approximately 10,000 petitions per year asking it to review a particular dispute--called a petition for a writ of certiorari or petition for "cert." As the Court cannot possibly hold an oral argument and decide each requested case, it usually selects the most critical 75-80 cases per year, with the term starting in October and running through the following summer. Lawyers anxiously await the Court's decision on which cases it will hear and then speculate as to why it may or may not have accepted "cert" in a particular case and what this may mean for that area of law going forward.Posted by A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
August 31, 2012
Registered Farm Apprenticeships are in Demand, but Difficult to Implement
The age of the average American farmer has risen to 57 years old. Moreover, the percentage of farmers over 75 increased by 30%, while the percentage of farmers under 25 dropped by 20%. Vast quantities of young people simply are not entering farming these days, and that's a problem many communities have an interest in solving.Posted by A. Bryan Endres and Rachel Armstrong Permalink Tweet
May 2, 2012
Definitional Debates and Uncertainty for Would-be Biofuel Producers
Words have power, and when the semantic conveyance of those words is ambiguous, inconsistency, instability and risk ensue. For over 100 years, ecologists have debated the definitions of "native" and "nonnative." In the process, the debate has unintentionally spilled over to other terms. For instance, definitional boundaries between "nonnative" and "invasive" have become virtually indiscernible, causing many to use the words interchangeably. In some circumstances this blending ambiguity has crossed over to noxious weeds. As a result, many state statutes will associate invasive plants and noxious weeds. It should be remembered, however, that a noxious weed--which is most often a government regulated plant species that impacts cultivated lands for agricultural producers--is not necessarily an invasive species. In an unmanaged system, the "noxious weed" could be a "native plant" species.Posted by A. Bryan Endres, James McCubbins and Lauren D. Quinn Permalink Tweet
February 1, 2012
Federal Preemption and Animal Regulation
On January 23rd, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned California's rule that prohibited the slaughtering or selling of non-ambulatory ("downer") animals for human consumption, holding that the Federal Meat Inspection Act foreclosed additional rules implemented at the state level. The case, National Meat Association v. Harris, pitted a trade association versus California's Attorney General--the state official charged with enforcing the statute. Although the litigation was confined to the scope of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) in relation to the California rule, the Courts holding could apply to other state efforts to regulate animal welfare.Posted by A. Bryan Endres and Megan R. Galey Permalink Tweet
January 11, 2012
Proposal to Revise Child Labor Rules for Agriculture
This fall, the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division proposed new regulations for children working agricultural jobs. The Wage and Hour Division (WHD) worked with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to craft the first proposed updates to agricultural child labor regulations in over forty years. The purpose of the proposed regulations is to increase the safety of children who work in agriculture align the rules with those of other high-risk occupations, such as manufacturing.Posted by Carly E. Giffin and A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
January 3, 2012
New Regulatory Pathways for Genetically Engineered Plants
Recent USDA approval for the commercialization of a Kentucky Bluegrass (Poa pratensis L.) genetically engineered (GE) for tolerance to glyphosate has the potential to drastically alter the exiting regulatory framework for USDA's review of new GE plants. This may be especially true in the context of new GE bioenergy crops that do not have a residual use for food and/or animal feed. A potential easing of federal review, however, could prompt increased scrutiny at the state/local level under existing noxious weed laws, leading to an even more complex regulatory system.Posted by A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
August 30, 2011
Biotech Corn, Exports to China and Midwestern Litigation
Bunge North America, a major buyer and exporter of grain and oilseeds, recently announced a purchasing policy in which it will not accept the Agrisure® VipteraTM - MIR162 biotech corn variety developed by Syngenta. The rationale behind this decision is the regulatory approval status of the product in the global marketplace--specifically, China. Although already approved for import into several nations (Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Australia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Korea and Taiwan), Chinese approval is not expected until 2012. As the seventh largest export destination of U.S. corn (and expected to grow significantly this year from 1.5 to 2.0 million metric tons), Bunge elected to forego purchasing of the VipteraTM variety due to concerns of product commingling and the potential loss of the commercially important Chinese market.Posted by A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
August 26, 2011
Sensitivity of Farm Balance Sheets to Changes in Farm Real Estate
A commonly cited financial health measure for U.S. households is the percent of housing equity to total household wealth. Household equity as a percentage of household net worth has declined to about 11% from 23% during the peak. A June 2011 report from CoreLogic estimates that Nevada has the highest negative equity percentage with 63% of all home mortgaged properties underwater, followed by Arizona (50%), Florida (46%), Michigan (36%) and California (31%). They estimate that approximately 22% of mortgages in Illinois have debt values exceeding property values.Posted by Paul Ellinger Permalink Tweet
July 13, 2011
Are Farmers Exempt from Illinois Sales Tax?
This question seems to come up often. The answer to the question, however, is "No"! Farmer's are not exempt from sales tax but some equipment they buy may be exempt. To explain this we must first know the history of this subject. In the early 1980's, Illinois passed the 86 Illinois Administration Code 130.305 exempting machinery (personal machinery that is moveable) from the State of Illinois sales tax. This machinery is narrowed to only include machinery used in the "production of crops, livestock, animal husbandry, floriculture, horticulture and viticulture". This was lobbied hard for by farm equipment dealers and other ag groups.Posted by Gary Goodwin Permalink Tweet
July 8, 2011
$750 Million Settlement in GM Rice Contamination
Bayer CropSciences recently agreed to a $750 million settlement aimed at compensating long-grain rice farmers for damages they suffered when trace amounts of the company's genetically-modified "Liberty Link" rice was found in the commercial rice supply in 2006. The unapproved for commercial use (and import into Europe) GM variety caused a plunge of nearly 14% in rice futures and the removal of U.S. rice from European store shelves. In the wake of the market collapse, thousands of U.S. rice farmers filed suit against Bayer, alleging that the GM contamination ruined their crops and depressed the worldwide market for rice exports. The settlement comes on the heels of four years' worth of bellwether litigation conducted in state and federal courts throughout the U.S. Each verdict in those cases found Bayer negligent in allowing GM contamination, and several state court juries awarded punitive damages against the company--including a $42 million verdict in Arkansas state court that currently is on appeal.Posted by A. Bryan Endres and Nicholas R. Johnson Permalink Tweet
July 1, 2011
New Law Will Ease Regulatory Burdens for Small Food Producers
In late May, the Illinois legislature passed Senate Bill 840, which exempts small, home-based food businesses producing certain "non-hazardous" food from state licensing and inspection oversight. The aim of the bill, which now awaits Governor Quinn's signature, is to ease the regulatory burdens that these small "cottage food" producers face when trying to sell their products directly to consumers. This represents a significant change to the state's regulatory scheme for food products - previously, all food sold to consumers had to be made in commercial kitchens licensed and inspected by the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH). In passing the Bill, the Illinois legislature follows on the heels of at least twenty other states that have either passed or are considering similar legislation.Posted by A. Bryan Endres and Nicholas R. Johnson Permalink Tweet
May 6, 2011
Agricultural Sustainability Standards Moving Toward the Finish Line
In 2008, the Leonardo Academy embarked on process to facilitate the development of a national standard for sustainable agricultural cropping systems, under the rules of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) (http://www.leonardoacademy.org/about/programs/sustainable-agriculture.html). The ANSI standard development requirements provide for an open, balanced, and transparent standards-setting process that is internationally recognized. Accordingly, Sustainable Agriculture Standards Committee responsible for developing the principles, criteria and indicators defining sustainable agriculture is comprised for a diverse group of stakeholders--including farmers, food companies, retailers, trade associations, government representatives, environmental organizations, labor organizations, consumer groups, certifiers and academics. For information on how to participate in this standard development process or to act as an official observer to this standard development, see http://www.leonardoacademy.org/programs/standards/agstandard/participate.html.Posted by A. Bryan Endres and Jody M. Endres Permalink Tweet
April 8, 2011
Can State-Level Climate Policies Survive Constitutional Scrutiny?
Over the past five years, California has filled the void in federal leadership though implementation of comprehensive climate change legislation. Commonly known as A.B. 32, its framework includes, among other policies, a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) that aims to gradually reduce the overall carbon intensity (CI) of all transportation fuels consumed in California to 10 percent in 2020. Each fuel "pathway" is assigned a carbon intensity value based on "field to tank" lifecycle analysis (LCA). Midwestern corn ethanol, under the California Air Resources Board's (ARB's) LCA methodology, is assigned a similar CI to that of gasoline, in part due to a large CI penalty for emissions from indirect land use change.Posted by Jody M. Endres and A. Bryan Endres Permalink Tweet
