Enhancing Rural Communities and Entrepreneurship Through Research and Outreach Addressing Legal and Regulatory Issues in Direct Marketing

<p>NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY:<br/> Agriculture is arguably the most heavily regulated industry in the United States. As an industry, agriculture is impacted by a host of local, state, federal, and international laws, regulations, and policies that impact virtually aspect of production, processing, distributing, marketing, and disposal of agricultural goods and services. Because these laws and regulations impact the nation's agricultural community, and, therefore, the nation in so many ways, it is imperative that there be access to timely and objective research and information on a range of agricultural and food law and policy issues.

<p>APPROACH:
<br/>The project will be conducted through a team of attorneys with unique backgrounds in various aspects of agricultural and food law. The Center provides research, information, and outreach activities on a local, state, regional, and national basis. The primary method for reviewing and evaluating results will be to monitor the use of the Center's web site by web users. This data has been maintained and tracked for several years and will continue to be done in that manner for the foreseeable future. Other evaluation components include written evaluations conducted in conjunction with specific outreach activities. Currently, the target audience is defined as the nation's agricultural community. This includes attorneys, farmers, policymakers at the local, state, and federal levels, Congressional staffers, extension personnel, consumers, agribusiness and others.
This target audience, including the degree to which any one part of the target audience is focused on, as needs are assessed. Some issues such as food safety or crop insurance require different focus for different audiences. Audiences served by the Center gain technical and practical knowledge on a variety of agricultural and food law related issues.
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PROGRESS:
<br/>2011/09 TO 2012/08 <br/>OUTPUTS: In the first part of the first year of the project, the requisite surveys were completed and disseminated to inform the format of the upcoming Legal Guide publications, discussed below. The surveys were designed to inform the project moving forward based on Direct Marketing Legal Guides previously published (Arkansas and Illinois). The survey results revealed that the model publications (the Arkansas Legal Guide to Direct Marketing and the Illinois Legal Guide to Direct Marketing) were on point and the format for moving forward with the project. The legal research was completed for two states during the reporting period. This included the legal research for Mississippi and Wyoming REAL Legal Guides. The first drafts were completed during this period and extensive edits and reviews were undertaken. PARTICIPANTS: Not relevant to
this project. TARGET AUDIENCES: This information is important to individuals, businesses, and communities interested in engagement of direct marketing activities of various agricultural commodities. In addition, the information will be relevant to Cooperative Extension Service personnel and others who work with producers. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Two of the webinars originally scheduled for Year One will be in Year Two. The reason for the change is that the webinars are based on the published Legal Guides for the two initial states, but under the terms of the grant those Guides were not due for publication until Year Two. The timing of the two initial webinars resulted from an oversight in the original application that was supposed to have been changed. The oversight was not discovered until post-award and project implementation. In addition, it bears noting that it appears at this stage
the project has begun to move ahead of schedule. Those results will be reported on at the end of Year Two.</p>