Land Use Prof Blog

Protecting Ag Land in the Big Sky State

Contributing to the growing national dialogue on agriculture and food law, the University of Montana’s Land Use Clinic recently issued a report on agricultural protection through local planning, regulation, and incentives.  While portions of the report are specific to Montana, other portions are more national in scope, discussing a variety of communities that have used land use planning techniques to not only protect agricultural lands from development but also build agricultural support systems that keep producers in operation. 

The Montana Constitution is unique in requiring state lawmakers to “protect, enhance, and develop all of agriculture” (Mont. Const. art. XII, § 1), and Montana is among a small handful of states in expressly requiring mitigation of impacts to agriculture during subdivision review after submission of an Environmental Assessment (Mont. Code Ann. § 76-3-603, -608(3)).  These legal protections were implemented in the early 1970s but have yet to be fully carried out by Montana local governments, many of which are now facing the reality of dwindling agricultural lands and growing demand for local food supply.  A Missoula Independent story titled "Digging In" profiles one case study that is representative of the larger issue.

Agricultural protection is revealing itself to be contentious in Montana, with property rights interests pitted against interests in local food supply and the protection of agricultural heritage.  Last month, I attended a community listening session that was packed with a divided crowd.  Participants were often emotional, but also quite thoughtful, in explaining the dilemma.  Dozens of young farmers belonging to the Community Food Agricultural Coalition sported green t-shirts that read “I like AG in my culture.”  These new farmers expressed a strong desire to pursue agriculture as their livelihood but need significant help locating farmland on which to operate.  This proves difficult because they are not born into farming families and thus unlikely to inherit agricultural property.  The new farmers also need older operators to train them in the trade.   Farmers market representatives added their perspective about the growing demand for local food as a key part of the economy.  Even 4H kids stood up and said “I want to protect agriculture!”

Existing farmers, often nearing retirement age, admonished the audience that their farmland is their “IRA”---the sale of farmland to developers is often their sole source of retirement income after years of hard labor working the land.  To keep the land in production, they argue, requires that the community pay them to do so.  Mitigation requirements, they contend, are simply taking more off the farmers’ backs.   Representatives from the realty organizations argued that people also have a right to housing, and that urbanizing communities will need to look beyond their boundaries for food supply. 

The Clinic’s report offers a possible road map for local governments to begin the long process of creating robust agricultural protection programs that balance these competing interests.  We were lucky enough to receive a grant from the Pleiades Foundation to print and disseminate this report to local governments.  If there are case studies that you believe should be mentioned in the report, we welcome additional suggestions before the final version goes to print.

Michelle Bryan Mudd

Field Report: The Ahupua'a of Hawaii

I am writing this blog post from lovely Kona on the island of Hawaii, where I am in town for the next week for the wedding of two good friends.  And, as luck would have it, I happened upon an interesting land use topic on my first full day here.  The National Historic Park Pu`uhonua O Hōnaunau, also known as Place of Refuge, was a designate piece of land where law breaking civilians, or warrior during times of war, could come and seek protection from the penalty of death. 

The park, which also include royal grounds adjoining the Place of Refuge, crosses over three Ahupua‘a, traditional Hawaiian land divisions that run in narrow pie-shaped tracts from the ocean to the mountains.  A number of these separate tracts would be under the control of an individual chief, and each Ahupua’a was ruled by a designated subordinate.  The boundaries of the Ahupua’a were shaped by streams or other natural features.  Each Ahupua’a was designed to be a self-contained area, which provided access to the sea for fishing and salt, to arable land for crops, and to the forests and mountains for resources.  The sizes of Ahupua’a would vary to ensure provision of adequate resources, resulting in wider tracts in less plentiful areas.

The Ahupua’a were largely split through land redistribution in the nineteenth century, but some remained intact under private ownership for some time.  In addition to being a system of land division, the Ahupua’a provided for cooperative use of the land and an emphasis on carefully protecting resources needed for survival.  Some contemporary groups are seeking to retrieve elements of the Ahupua’a system in the interests of sustainability and localism.

According to a Park Ranger I spoke with, it is believed that the Ahupua’a system was derived from Polynesian methods of land and social division.  I have heard of similar methods of dividing land into narrow tracts providing access to a range of resources in places including parts of Guyana and West Africa.

John Infranca 

More Buffalo Boosting: Artfarms!

I just can't enough of Buffalo these days. Yesterday, I posted about our "zombieness" and today I learned of something fun being done with some of our vacant land (up to 20% of the land in the city of Buffalo is vacant -- no that is not the same thing as open space). Some Brooklyn-based architects are suggesting we turn the land into artfarms. Never heard of artfarms? Me neither. The architects describe them as sculptures that serve as agricultural grow structures. Urban farming meets local artists.

"These above-ground, vertically designed sculptures will provide a means to produce fruits, vegetables and flowers for the surrounding community, but they will also provide a creative basis for expansion. In essence, the concept of Artfarms is to create and erect devices that are not just aesthetically appealing, but that will serve a greater purpose by triggering redevelopment."

I hope they find some funding and support to make these happen. Nothing tastes better than a local ogranic tomato grown on a structure that belongs at Burning Man.

Jessie Owley

Butsic et al on Landscape Management for Species Conservation

These authors create a model to figure out which land uses optimize species protection while maximizing economic output. 

 Analytical Solutions to Trade-Offs between Size of Protected Areas and Land-Use Intensity from Conservation Biology by Van Butsic, Volker C. Radeloff, Tobias Kuemmerle, and Anna M. Pidgeon

Land-use change is affecting Earth's capacity to support both wild species and a growing human population. The question is how best to manage landscapes for both species conservation and economic output. If large areas are protected to conserve species richness, then the unprotected areas must be used more intensively. Likewise, low-intensity use leaves less area protected but may allow wild species to persist in areas that are used for market purposes. This dilemma is present in policy debates on agriculture, housing, and forestry. Our goal was to develop a theoretical model to evaluate which land-use strategy maximizes economic output while maintaining species richness. Our theoretical model extends previous analytical models by allowing land-use intensity on unprotected land to influence species richness in protected areas. We devised general models in which species richness (with modified species-area curves) and economic output (a Cobb–Douglas production function) are a function of land-use intensity and the proportion of land protected. Economic output increased as land-use intensity and extent increased, and species richness responded to increased intensity either negatively or following the intermediate disturbance hypothesis. We solved the model analytically to identify the combination of land-use intensity and protected area that provided the maximum amount of economic output, given a target level of species richness. The land-use strategy that maximized economic output while maintaining species richness depended jointly on the response of species richness to land-use intensity and protection and the effect of land use outside protected areas on species richness within protected areas. Regardless of the land-use strategy, species richness tended to respond to changing land-use intensity and extent in a highly nonlinear fashion.

Jessie Owley

CFP: Food Law at Maine

News of a great Colloquium being planned for next year at the University of Maine School of Law, via Sarah Schindler:

The Maine Law Review invites you to participate in its 2013 Food Law Colloquium. The Colloquium presents an opportunity for discussion and debate about the legal architecture of food systems in Maine, the United States, and beyond. To complement the Colloquium, the spring volume of the Review will be devoted to high-quality legal scholarship focusing on a wide range of food law topics.

The Maine Law Review seeks submissions of papers for oral presentation at the Colloquium and for publication in its Spring 2013 volume. We invite contributions in the form of articles or essays addressing any aspect of food law. Topics may include, but are not limited to: local food ordinances and states’ rights movements; the effects of the 2012 Farm Bill on small-scale agriculture; food safety and security; judicial responses to competing interests of seed patent owners and farmers; the challenges of securing financing for farmland conservation; administrative hurdles confronting the seafood industry; cooperatives and securities law; comparative analyses of food law frameworks; and emerging issues in food law. Although traditional, full-length papers are welcome, we principally seek shorter essays (roughly 8,000 to 15,000 words, including references) that will stimulate lively discussion at the Colloquium.

Draft abstracts and queries may be addressed to Aga Pinette, Editor-in-Chief, at [email protected], no later than September 30, 2012. Please accompany submissions with a curriculum vitae, and indicate your willingness and availability to travel to Portland, Maine, to participate in the Colloquium in February or March 2013.

Matt Festa

Pipelines, Eminent Domain, and Property Rights

Up until now the Keystone Pipeline issue has been cast mainly as a contest between an economic development imperative and environmental conservation.  Legal commentators have analyzed it as an environmental issue.  As most people can infer, though, the notion of building an "infrastructure" project from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico will require some land rights.  Perhaps only in Texas can we see the underlying tension between two principles that are very often in direct conflict: the exploitation of oil and gas resources, and the property owner's rights to her land.  The New York Times last week did a fascinating story on one Texas landowner's fight against the eminent domain authority of the Keystone Pipeline, An Old Texas Tale Retold: The Farmer versus the Oil Company.

Ms. Crawford is worried about the possible contamination of her creek. She pointed out that the Keystone 1, TransCanada’s first pipeline, had a dozen spills in its first year of operation.

“I called my farm insurance agent and asked what happens if there’s a spill, I can’t water my crops, and my corn dies,” she said. “He said my insurance won’t cover that. I’d have to sue TransCanada for damages.”

The Crawfords are the last holdouts in Lamar County. (It is unclear how many are left in Texas; the company says it has 99 percent of the rights of way secured.) TransCanada asserts that it has used eminent domain only as “an absolute last resort” in an estimated 19 out of 1,452 land tracts in Texas. Critics dispute this number. . . .

Asked if she would take TransCanada’s offer now — if it meant the full $21,000, with all of her conditions met — she did not hesitate. “No,” she said. “There’s a $20,000 check sitting in the courthouse waiting for us,” she said. “But if we touch it, game over. We lose the use of our land, and we admit what they’re doing is right.”

This is a longstanding issue, both historically and today, but it often gets overlooked when people conflate Texas stereotypes about both property rights and solicitude for oil and gas.  Ilya Somin commented on the article at the Volokh Conspiracy, noting correctly that despite its pro-property rights reputation and cosmetic legislation, Texas law still empowers quite a bit of eminent domain for economic development purposes:

Such efforts are unlikely to succeed in Texas. As I described in this article, Texas is one of many states that have passed post-Kelo reform laws that pretend to constrain economic development takings without actually doing so. They might have a better chance in one of the other states through which the pipeline must pass.

The larger question that he poses is whether and how environmental concerns will play a part in future discussions about eminent domain and the never-ending debate over the essentially contested concepts of property rights and the common good.  In the real world of land use, the alignment of stakeholders, interests, policy preferences, and legal interpretations isn't always as easy to predict as the cartoon versions might imply.

Matt Festa

Happy May Day

It's May 1, 2012, and that means a few different things around the world.  Regular readers know that we like to do the occasional holiday-themed post on related land use issues, but this one needs to be disaggregated!

The original May Day celebrations were pagan rituals throughout Europe, particularly in Celtic, Germanic, and other Northern European societies.  These tended to focus on the traditional spring/early summer themes of rebirth and fecundity, with venerations of the deities of earth and flowers and so on.  As Christianity spread, the Church tended to co-opt these pagan celebrations, which continued the tradition of Maypoles and public festivities.  This tradition obviously relates to land use in its focus on the renewal of the earth and its bounty going into the new summer.

Then in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, May Day became a nearly universal labor holiday known as International Workers Day, as well as a day that became associated with socialism and communism.  Because the American Labor Day is not until September, I always assumed that this must have some European or Soviet origin.  But my exhaustive Wikipedia-based research for this post led me to realize that May 1 as International Workers Day originated right here in the U.S. of A., thanks to the 1886 Haymarket Riots in Chicago, where police fired shots into the crowd at a worker's strike after a bomb exploded.  This galvanized the interational labor movement, which led the Second International to declare May 1 as International Workers Day in 1889.  In fact, the reason the American Labor Day is set in September seems to have been a desire to disassociate it with the Haymarket anniversary.  Any time we're talking about riots, strikes, public demonstrations, or urban politics, there is always a host of land use issues involved.

The theme of May 1 as an international labor day has led some of the Occupy Movement to plan to Occupy May 1 to urge a general strike and as a chance to relaunch their protest movement in cities around the world.  The Occupy Movement deserves some further study for the interesting land use issues it presents, both in terms of its attempts to, well, "occupy" public and private spaces in cities, and also for its organization of those spaces-- I have heard from more than one observer that in some of the Occupy encampments they have instituted an informal sort of zoning apparatus.  At this hour it seems that the Occupy May Day affairs have been generally peaceful. 

Another prominent commemoration of May 1 in the U.S. comes with Law Day.  While not widely known outside the legal profession, bar associations across the land have programs to celebrate and educate members on the importance of law (e.g., today I went to the local bar's Law Day banquet to recognize a major award earned by one of my students).  Land use law being a field of growing importance in the profession, it goes without saying that any commemoration of law generally should include a nod to those who practice land use law in our communities.  I had thought that Law Day was mostly an inside-baseball event for lawyers and bar organizations, but again (thanks to Wikipedia) I just learned that the origin of Law Day was really an anti-communist maneuver.  In response to the growing importance of May 1 in the communist and particularly the Soviet sphere (think back to parades of tanks and nuclear missiles down the central square), President Eisenhower declared the first Law Day as a celebration of the rule of law and its critical importance to democracy and civilization.  The commemoration of Law Day is codified at 36 U.S.C. 113.

So whether you celebrate May 1 for it's pagan/Christian celebration of earthly renewal; it's relevance to the international labor movement and urban politics; or for it's commemoration of the importance of the rule of law in society, May Day has an important relationship with land use.  The last use of the term "Mayday," as a distress signal, comes not from the first day of this month, but rather from the French venez m'aider (come help me).  The only academic connection I can think of from that usage, however, is that it is perhaps being muttered right now by the students who are taking my exam tomorrow.

Matt Festa

Schindler on The Conflict Between Local Governments and Locavores

As regular readers know, we have a fondess for blogging about chickens.  Now our friend Prof. Sarah Schindler (Maine) has given us another opportunity with her new article Of Backyard Chickens and Front Yard Gardens: The Conflict between Local Governments and Locavores, forthcoming in the Tulane Law Review, Vol. 87 (2012).  The abstract:

Locavores aim to source their food locally. Many locavores are also concerned more broadly with living sustainably and decreasing reliance on industrial agriculture. As more people have joined the locavore movement, including many who reside in urban and suburban areas, conflict has emerged between the locavores’ desires to use their private property to produce food — for personal use and for sale — and municipal zoning ordinances that seek to separate agriculture from residential uses.

In this article, I consider the evolution of this conflict and its implications for our systems of land use, local government, and environmental law. Specifically, I investigate the police power rationales for the existence of ordinances that disallow urban homesteading in urban and suburban communities. I then demonstrate that public health, civic virtue, and free market principles can be used to justify the passage of ordinances that would expressly permit these behaviors. Central to this analysis is a discussion of the problems caused by industrial agriculture and the lack of access to locally produced foods — food insecurity, food deserts, obesity tied to processed foods, monoculture-induced environmental catastrophes, harm to animals, and greenhouse gas emissions — all of which could be alleviated, at least in part, through urban agriculture. In recognition of these changing conceptions of harm, some local governments have begun to pass ordinances expressly allowing gardens, chickens, and the sale of produce in residential areas. I conclude by considering what this movement toward loosening restrictions on the use of private property says more broadly about the decline of Euclidean zoning controls and the future of land use law.

While the urban agriculture issues are very interesting in their own right, the implications of this article go to the heart of the modern discomfort with the legacy of traditional Euclidean land use regulation.  Well worth a read. 

Matt Festa

Salkin on Callies on Regulation in Hawai'i

Patricia Salkin (Albany) has posted a review essay called David L. Callies, Regulating Paradise: Land Use Controls in Hawai’i (2d Ed. 2010) (Book Review), published in The Urban Lawyer, Vol. 43, No. 4, p. 1107, 2011. The abstract:

In 1984, Professor David Callies wrote Regulating Paradise to describe the regulatory scheme in Hawai’i. In 2010, he followed up that book with Regulating Paradise: Land Use Controls in Hawai’i to reexamine the issues as they have developed over the last 25-plus years: housing affordability, the subjects of development agreements, condemnation, defining open space and agricultural lands, takings, cultural sensitivity, environmental assessment, the prevalence of covenanted communities, and redevelopment.

This essay is a review of Professor Callies work which is a must read for anyone involved in land use in Hawaii. What emerges from his work are lingering questions about whether the regulatory scheme has over protected paradise.

Matt Festa

"Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron"

From Heidi Gorovitz Robertson at CSU, an announcement for their upcoming symposium:

Cleveland-Marshall College of Law seeks proposals for presentations at  Urban Agriculture: It’s Not an Oxymoron, Policies for Cultivating City Land and Increasing Access to Local Food, a symposium on law and policy issues connected to urban agriculture, land use, and the local food movement. 

As the movement towards local food continues to grow, cities are finding that they must develop law and policies to allow for and regulate agricultural practices within urban communities. Many cities are implementing policies to increase urban food production through regulation, incentives, and more comprehensive land-use and public-health policies.  Cities are doing so because they are recognizing that increasing agricultural land use can be a good answer to declining populations and an excess of abandoned or foreclosed properties.  Cities are also recognizing that increasing access to local food can provide economic and public health benefits.

This symposium will explore the laws and policies that cities have implemented to increase local food production and access to local food.  It will also address some of the benefits and challenges of implementing these policies.  Finally, it will address the need to strengthen the urban, suburban, and rural food connection to move towards more sustainable and reliable local food production.  All papers concerning these or related issues are welcome.  

The symposium will take place in Cleveland, Ohio on April 20, 2012.  C|M|LAW invites academics, practitioners, policymakers, and others to submit presentations or scholarly papers on related topics.  A proposal for your paper or presentation, of no more than three pages, should be...submitted via the link below.  

For more information about the symposium, please visit C|M|Law’s website.

Jamie Baker Roskie

 

Walter Russell Mead on the Crisis of the American Dream

Walter Russell Mead (Bard College) has posted a fascinating essay at The American Interest called Beyond Blue Part One: The Crisis of the American Dream.  An excerpt:

I’ve written in earlier posts about the shift from the first American Dream to the second: from the family farm to the suburban “homestead.” It was a profound change in American life and culture that has not yet been fully explored.  The family farm integrated production and consumption, work and leisure, family and business.  The family wasn’t just a union of sentiment: it was an element of production.  Mom and Dad worked as a team to feed, house and clothe the family, and as the kids grew up they took on greater and greater responsibilities in the common effort.  Their lives at home prepared them for the new lives they would lead on their own: the kids would grow up, marry, and start farms.

The 20th century suburban homestead was a very different place. 

This is almost exactly the theme of an article I am writing, so naturally I find it interesting!  Mead's essay ranges well beyond land use, but his grounding of the "American Dream" in patterns of living and social organization speaks to how incredibly relevant land use models are to the compelling issues facing American society in the 21st Century.

Matt Festa

Farmers Take Back Land Slated For Housing

On Morning Edition today, NPR ran a story about farmers who sold land for development repurchasing it for agriculural use.  Here's the summary:

Over the past half-century more than 20 million acres of U.S. farmland were transformed into housing developments. With new home construction all but stopped, farmers in many areas are buying or leasing land once slated for development and planting crops on it.

Jim K.

Urban Gardens in Cleveland

We've posted a few items about Cleveland, since it is a great city on that edge of transition; it has undertaken some ambitious programs to deal with abandoned properties as well as to promote urban green uses, as Catherine LaCroix has written about.  From inhabitat.com, here's an inspiring photo gallery: Thousands of Vacant Houses Set to Bloom into Urban Gardens in Cleveland, Ohio.

So far Cleveland has flattened 6,400 homes since 2005, and a further 20,000 are on the cards for demolition throughout the County.

Thanks to Autumn Richards for the pointer.

Matt Festa

Jeff Foxworthy Puts a Conservation Easement on His Farm

Proving that he is, indeed, smarter than a fifth grader, comedian Jeff Foxworthy has placed a conservation easement on 1,000 acres of his farm in west Georgia.  From the article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

“As someone who grew up in Atlanta and watched it explode, I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if this could be here forever and nobody could develop it? ‘ ” said Foxworthy in a phone interview today from the property, which is based in Harris County between LaGrange and Columbus, about 100 miles south of downtown Atlanta. “It’s my escape. It’s my farm. I can drive through the gate and not have to be Jeff Foxworthy. Just Jeff.”

The land, which Foxworthy purchased in 2003, was being eyed as a possible golf course, he said. It was originally part of Cason Callaway’s 40,000-acre Blue Springs Farm, which was established as an agricultural experiment in the 1940s to promote better farm practices. The easement allows Foxworthy to maintain private property rights and the ability to live on the land. He also receives a tax break.

Foxworthy has spent most of his comedic career helping folks decide whether or not they were rednecks.  It's good to see him putting his success to good use in the land conservation arena.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Arezki, Deininger, & Selod on What Drives the Global Land Rush

Rabah Arezki (IMF), Klaus Deininger (World Bank), and Harris Selod (World Bank) have posted What Drives the Global Land Rush?  The abstract:

This paper studies the determinants of foreign land acquisition for large-scale agriculture. To do so, gravity models are estimated using data on bilateral investment relationships, together with newly constructed indicators of agro-ecological suitability in areas with low population density as well as land rights security. Results confirm the central role of agro-ecological potential as a pull factor. In contrast to the literature on foreign investment in general, the quality of the business climate is insignificant whereas weak land governance and tenure security for current users make countries more attractive for investors. Implications for policy are discussed.

Matt Festa

 

Rural Sustainability Report

From the Sustainable Communities folks at EPA:

New Partnership for Sustainable Communities Report:
Supporting Sustainable Rural Communities

The HUD-DOT-EPA Partnership for Sustainable Communities and the USDA has
just released Supporting Sustainable Rural Communities, a report that
discusses how the four agencies are collaborating to support rural
communities. This publication highlights how small towns and rural
places across the country are using federal resources to strengthen
their economies, provide better quality of life to residents, and build
on local assets such as traditional main streets, agricultural lands,
and natural resources.

The report includes sections on how HUD, DOT, EPA, and USDA programs
support environmentally and economically sustainable growth in rural
places; performance measures rural communities can use to target their
investments; and 12 case studies of rural communities using federal
resources to achieve their development and economic goals. It also
outlines steps the Partnership for Sustainable Communities is pursuing
to support small towns and rural places.

To read the report, please visit this website.

Jamie Baker Roskie

Burdon on "What is Good Land Use?"

Well the title pretty much asks the basic question for all of us, right? Peter D. Burdon (Adelaide) has posted What is Good Land Use? From Rights to Relationship. The abstract:

Industrial agriculture is the dominant method for feeding an increasingly urbanised world. However, a growing body of literature suggests that industrial practices are unsustainable and risk global food security. This article examines the legal-philosophical dimension of this literature and the vision of good land use promoted in both industrial and agrarian farming practices. It argues that industrial agriculture is premised on a concept of private property that promotes individual preference satisfaction, separates people from place and fragments landscape. In response, this article examines agrarian farming practices as a means of re-conceiving private property so that it is seen to embrace not only human good, but also ethics and the land itself. By re-conceiving private property as embracing these factors, private property may offer but one solution to the agricultural crisis.

Matt Festa

Schutz on Community Approaches to Rural Land Stewardship

Anthony B. Schutz (Nebraska) has posted Toward a More Multi-Functional Rural Landscape: Community Approaches to Rural Land Stewardship, forthcoming in the Fordham Environmental Law Journal. The abstract:

This Article how farms and ranches can adapt to meet consumer demand for outdoor activities like hunting, wildlife viewing, hiking, or simply enjoying the solace of spending time in rural places. These places hold breathtaking landscapes, but they are often privately owned, relatively inaccessible to the general public, and have not been managed to produce the ecosystem services that support these activities, despite strong evidence of consumer demand. Historically, farms and ranches have been managed for a single dominant use, undertaken wholly upon an individual’s landholdings. Entering the emerging market for nature-based experiences requires that farms and ranches adapt from fragmented single-use businesses to multi-functional enterprises that cooperatively operate at larger spatial scales.

This Article explains how lawyers can help farmers and ranchers make such a move. It uses existing private law and Ostrom's principles of collective action to illustrate how these communities should be designed. It also offers some preliminary thoughts on possible areas for legal reform that would facilitate the development of these enterprises.

It also explores the relationships these enterprises have with the emerging local-food movement. As with traditional producers, the multi-functionality these institutions bring to individual farmers can be used as a diversification strategy for local-food producers. The income from these activities, in turn, helps stem the environmental consequences of using land for food production. In addition, the communities that may emerge within the foodshed and those that may emerge to support nature-based entrepreneurship are complimentary. Each may foster, and profit from, the sort of communitarian thinking that is necessary to the other, resulting in a more multi-functional and sustainable rural landscape.

Matt Festa

Salkin on Bee Siting

Patricia Salkin (Albany), the quintessential "busy bee", has posted Honey, It's All the Buzz: Regulating Neighborhood Bee Hives (B.C. Env. Aff. L. Rev., forthcoming 2011).  Here's the abstract:

Urban beekeeping, along with other types of urban agriculture, sustainable development and green building, has generated quite a buzz in recent years. Small-scale beekeeping has proven to be especially popular among people looking to obtain more of their food from local sources and urban bees provide important pollination services to community gardens, home vegetable gardens and fruit trees. Some people also believe that honey contributes to a healthier lifestyle by providing a minimally-processed sweetener and through its various uses as a homeopathic remedy. Small-scale beekeeping may augment local economies too. Despite the benefits and growing popularity of backyard beekeeping, apiaries are not always welcomed by the neighbors. This article is designed to provide information to land use regulators about the benefits and drawbacks of beekeeping in residential areas, and it offers strategies for addressing beekeeping activities through local laws and ordinances.

Jim K.

Salkin & Lavine on Regional Foodsheds

Patricia E. Salkin (Albany) and Amy Lavine (Albany) have posted Regional Foodsheds: Are Our Local Zoning and Land Use Regulations Healthy?, Fordham Environmental Law Journal, Vol. XXII (2011). The abstract:

Governments at all levels have become increasingly interested in fostering healthy eating habits and sustainable agricultural production. Promoting access to locally grown produce is an important part of many policy goals seeking to address these concerns, and the concept of regional foodsheds has risen in popularity as one method to achieve these goals. Research indicates that community based food systems have the potential to address food security, public health, social justice, and ecological health. Food production and consumption patterns are influenced by a range of federal, state, and municipal policies, but meaningful change in regional food system policies is likely to start with state and local governments, which can take proactive measures to strengthen their regional foodsheds through a variety of land use planning and regulatory actions. This Article focuses on how existing land use plans and regulations can promote healthier and more sustainable communities through the foodshed movement. In particular, this Article discusses specific land use strategies that can be implemented in urban and suburban settings to facilitate local and regional food production and distribution that go beyond farmland preservation strategies and examine, among other things, smaller-scale community gardens, residential agricultural uses and farmers markets.

Matt Festa