Lee R. Schroeder is an Ohio licensed attorney with Schroeder Law LLC in Ottawa. He limits his practice to business, real estate, estate planning and agriculture issues in northwest Ohio. He can be reached at lee@leeschroeder.com or at (419) 523-5523. This article is not intended to serve as legal advice, and specific advice should be sought from the licensed attorney of your choice based upon the specific facts and circumstances that you face.
New technology and scientific advancements have made it possible for farmers to grow more diverse crops in a wide-variety of areas. Although this is a great thing for food production, it can cause problems when it comes to legal issues.
It’s important for farmers to keep each different type of crop completely separate, per FDA and Department of Agriculture guidelines. With different variations of each type of plant being available, it’s much more difficult to do that than ever before.
There are more opportunities than ever for farmers to specialize in their crop production. Advances in communication, technology and transportation give every farmer the chance to carve out a niche. Those niches are almost limitless, but each niche usually requires some contractual obligation by the farmer for purity in the product produced.
Some farmers produce non-genetically modified corn and soybeans. Some of the same farmers are raising crops that are genetically modified, but that produce particularly high concentrations of that crop’s oil (corn oil, soybean oil, etc.). Some of those same farmers also produce some organic commodities.
Read Lee’s full article on specialty crops in the Lima News here: Legal-Ease: Newest specialty crops require attention to detail
Source: LimaOhio.com, Legal-Ease: Newest specialty crops require attention to detail by Lee R. Schroeder, January 17, 2015