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The Agriculture Law Education Initiative (ALEI) Advisory Panel met October 16 in Grasonville, Md. The panel plays a vital role in informing the work that ALEI does and in helping build awareness about the Initiative as a resource for Maryland’s producers.
A recent ALEI impact report showed that over 60 percent of Maryland farmers reported that regulations affect farm operations to a high degree. Eighty-eight percent of farmers think agriculture law programs are either “important” or “very important” to their farm operations.
Panel members are strictly volunteers and include farmers and representatives from various industry organizations such as the Farm Bureau, environmental organizations such as the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy, and regulatory agencies such as the Maryland Department of Agriculture and the Maryland Department of the Environment.
According to Nicole Cook, environmental and agricultural faculty legal specialist with UMES’ ALEI, the panel helps inform ALEI’s legal specialists about legal and policy issues that are affecting Maryland’s agricultural industry. “The panel meets annually to hear from ALEI’s Working Group about initiatives that the Working Group implemented over the prior year,” Cook said, “and gives feedback to the Working Group about issues with which their constituents are contending and offers suggestions for areas where ALEI could offer more educational resources concerning the laws that impact farming and agriculture in Maryland.”
Current members are: Robert Etgen, executive director of the Eastern Shore Land Conservancy; Doug Green, an irrigation manager and farmer; Lindsay Thompson, executive director of the Maryland Grain Producers Utilization Board; Gary Kelman, an animal feeding operations program manager with the Nutrient Resources Division of the Maryland Department of the Environment; Julie Oberg, deputy secretary of the Maryland Department of Agriculture; John Torres, executive director of the Maryland Farm Bureau, Inc.; and Stephen Weber, Jr., a farmer.
Special guests attending the meeting were: Dr. Moses Kairo, dean of the School of Agricultural and Natural Sciences at UMES; Dr. Craig Beyrouty, dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Maryland College Park; and Donald Tobin, dean of the Francis king Carey School of Law at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Presentations included an MPower report by ALEI Legal Fellow Margaret Todd, food safety education by Cook, impact data from Farm Succession and Estate Planning workshops and county officials’ workshops, impact data from Agricultural Conservation Leasing workshops and programming plans for FY 20.
