Category: Ag Law

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers a powerful and accessible tool to solve a multitude of problems. Increasingly, people turn to AI to solve matters previously entrusted to professionals, including legal matters. This article briefly summarizes the advantages and disadvantages of using AI to address legal issues and suggests a role for AI in the legal needs of individuals and businesses. The authors acknowledge that AI was used to research this article.

In many ways, using artificial intelligence to provide professional services is not new. Commercial companies offer legal document drafting (particularly simple wills and trusts) and tax preparation services and have done so for years. Early will forms used very primitive artificial intelligence to draft simple wills.

The most compelling reason to use AI for legal needs is affordability. Lawyers are expensive and that cost can prevent people from seeking any legal help. AI is also fast, convenient, and easily accessible. An hour or so on the computer can provide a lot of information. No need to make appointments weeks in advance and brave traffic to drive to the appointment. Costs are generally minimal, especially compared to attorneys’ fees.

On the other hand, AI cannot make legal judgments. Law often involves gray areas and uncertain outcomes. Attorneys, unlike AI, have experience and education that aid in interpreting laws and advising clients based on particular circumstances. Legal systems are complex, nuanced, and evolving. Humans, although far from perfect, are better able to deal with legal systems. With respect to litigation, only licensed, human attorneys may represent a client in court. Although individuals may represent themselves and use AI as a support tool, that strategy may backfire. Finally, AI does not offer attorney-client privilege. Information shared with AI systems may not be kept private and confidential.

When the authors searched AI, the results suggested that AI could handle “routine or low-stakes legal matters.” Tasks that AI described as ideal for AI included “filing a business formation, applying for a trademark, or writing a simple contract.” In addition, AI can “quickly help someone generate a will, draft a lease agreement, or respond to a landlord dispute.” 

As an experiment, one of the authors had AI draft a will for them. The author responded to the prompts and then asked for a will compliant in the author’s state of residence. The will produced complied with state law and was a legally valid will. However, the will did not name an alternate executor (AI did not ask!), but had the court appoint an alternate executor, if necessary, a costly and time-consuming process. The named executor is about the same age as the author, meaning that they may well predecease the author, necessitating the naming of an alternate. In addition, the named executor lived out-of-state, likely meaning that the executor would have to post bond, adding more expense. 

The will also did not name alternate beneficiaries (AI did not ask!). Since the author named their 86-year-old mother as the sole beneficiary, odds are that she would predecease him, meaning that intestacy law would apply, thereby essentially negating the purpose of having the will drafted in the first place.

AI also failed to ask about special requests as to burial or cremation or other wishes at death. Most egregiously, the AI generated will failed to include a self-proving affidavit, meaning that the witnesses to the author signing the will would have to be tracked down after the death of the author to swear that the author was competent at the time the will was made. Any licensed attorney would likely include a self-proving affidavit, eliminating the need to have witnesses file affidavits at a later time, saving time and money. In summary, the will would be valid but lacking in many respects. A will drafted by an attorney would include the vital provisions that were missed and, in the long run, save money.

In conclusion, AI promises to revolutionize law practice. More importantly, individuals and businesses can use AI in meaningful ways to assist in legal matters. AI can analyze data quickly and efficiently, can do research, and compose draft documents. Individuals and businesses can use AI to learn about the law in a particular area and become aware of different options. If the alternative is no legal representation at all, AI may be the better option. However, AI is not a substitute for legal advice. In the words of ChatGPT, after being queried by the authors, “[u]se AI to learn, explore, and prepare – but when it comes time to make real legal decisions, always consult an attorney.”

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Richardson, Jessie, and Tiffany Lashmet. “Who Needs Attorneys When You Have AI?” Southern Ag Today 5(25.5). June 20, 2025. Permalink

On April 29, 2025, the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) released its Insecticide Strategy, the most recent component of EPA’s effort to revise how the agency meets its Endangered Species Act (“ESA”) responsibilities while taking actions under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (“FIFRA”). Like the final Herbicide Strategy that EPA released last September, the final Insecticide Strategy works to reduce pesticide exposure to protected wildlife by implementing mitigation measures to curb pesticide spray drift and runoff. 

EPA first announced its new policy to address pesticide exposure to species protected under the ESA in April 2022. That month, EPA announced a plan to create different strategy documents to address herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides. According to EPA, the new approach was necessary to address what the agency has described as a “decades-old challenge” to satisfy the agency’s obligations under both the ESA and FIFRA.

The ESA is the primary federal wildlife protection law in the United States, while FIFRA serves as the nation’s primary federal statute regulating pesticide use. Under the ESA, all federal agencies, including EPA, are required to consult with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) to ensure that the actions that federal agencies fund, authorize, or carry out will not “jeopardize” the continued existence of species protected under the ESA. Since the ESA was enacted, EPA has struggled to fully satisfy its consultation responsibilities when carrying out FIFRA actions. As a result, the agency has faced numerous lawsuits filed primarily by environmental groups seeking to compel EPA to complete ESA consultation on FIFRA actions. EPA’s new policy is aimed at resolving this on-going challenge.

Under its new approach, EPA has sorted all registered pesticides into broad groups and developed mitigation measures for each group designed to reduce pesticide exposure to protected species that occurs via pesticide spray drift and runoff or erosion. In 2024, EPA issued its draft Insecticide Strategy, outlining the various mitigation measures the agency was considering for insecticides. Following a 60-day public comment period that ran from July to September, EPA has officially released the final Insecticide Strategy. 

The final Insecticide Strategy outlines various mitigation measures designed to reduce pesticide exposure to protected invertebrate species by limiting pesticide spray drift and runoff/erosion. As in the draft Insecticide Strategy, the final Insecticide Strategy lays out a three-step framework that EPA will use to determine what additional mitigation measures to include on an insecticide label. Under step 1, EPA will establish the likelihood that a particular insecticide will have population-level impacts to protected wildlife species as either “not likely,” “low,” “medium,” or “high.” In general, mitigation will be lower when the potential for population-level impacts is lower and higher when the potential is higher. 

During step 2 of the process, EPA will determine which mitigation measures to apply. To reduce spray drift, the Insecticide Strategy relies on buffer zones and application equipment with the size of the buffer zone depending on the insecticide’s expected population-level impacts and the method of application. The largest buffer zone identified in the Strategy is a 300 foot buffer for aerial applications. All other buffer zones are identified as 100 feet or less. 

To reduce insecticide runoff and erosion, the Insecticide Strategy employs a so-called “menu” of mitigation measures. Each mitigation measure is assigned a point value from 1 to 3 with high efficacy mitigations receiving 3 points, medium efficacy mitigations receiving 2 points and low efficacy mitigations receiving 1 point. Based on the degree of population-level impacts EPA identified during step 1 of the Insecticide Strategy framework, the agency will identify the number of runoff/erosion mitigation points needed to apply a particular insecticide. Insecticides identified as having a low population-level impact will need 3 points, insecticides with a medium impact will need 6 points and insecticides with a high impact will need 9 points. 

Additionally, EPA has assigned counties different mitigation points based on how prone the fields in each county are to runoff. Counties with medium runoff potential will receive 2 mitigation points, counties with low runoff potential will receive 3 mitigation points and counties with very low runoff potential will receive 6 mitigation points. An applicator in a county with very low runoff potential applying an insecticide that requires 9 mitigation points will only need to achieve 3 extra mitigation points, while an applicator in a county with a low runoff potential applying the same insecticide would need to achieve 7 extra points.

In response to comments it received on the draft Insecticide Strategy, EPA has said that it is working towards certifying voluntary conservation programs the participation in which would automatically count as 9 mitigation points. Additionally, EPA will grant mitigation points to farmers and applicators who do not participate in a conservation program but use a qualified technical expert to plan insecticide applications.

Finally, during step 3 of the Insecticide Framework, EPA will determine where in the contiguous United States the spray drift and runoff/erosion mitigations will be required. Mitigation measures that are considered necessary across the entire contiguous United States will be included on an insecticide’s general label. Those mitigation measures that are only required in certain geographic areas known as Pesticide Use Limitation Areas (“PULAs”) will be posted as bulletins on EPA’s website Bulletins Live! Two. The insecticide’s label will instruct users to check Bulletins Live! Two prior to making an application to determine if there are any relevant PULAs with which the applicator needs to comply.

Most of the mitigation measures identified in the Insecticide Strategy are intended to reduce exposure to protected species that are not located on agricultural fields. However, EPA has identified 4 protected species that can be found on agricultural fields and would require additional in-field mitigation measures. EPA notes that mitigation measures for those species would be both geographically limited and limited to certain times of the year. Any on-field mitigations would be required through PULAs on Bulletins Live! Two.

EPA will begin implementing the Insecticide Strategy as it registers new insecticide products for use and conducts registration review of existing insecticides. 

Despite being dubbed the “final” Insecticide Strategy, EPA notes that it will continue to seek engagement on and develop certain aspects of the Strategy such as identifying additional conservation programs that would count as 9 mitigation points and further refining species maps to create more accurate PULAs. Overall, EPA believes that implementing the Insecticide Strategy will result in both more efficient ESA consultations with FWS and insecticide labels better equipped to withstand judicial review.

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Rollins, Brigit. “EPA Publishes Final Insecticide Strategy.” Southern Ag Today 5(21.5). May 23, 2025. Permalink

If you have been following the national agricultural news lately, beyond discussions on policy, there has been a focus on states’ legislatures considering “Crop Protection” legislation. This liability protection would extend to companies producing federally approved pesticides. 

We have all seen the news of large settlements from users of federally approved pesticides claiming linkages between their use and cancer. The biggest of these lawsuits is the Roundup litigation. To date, Bayer has paid roughly $10 billion to settle claims that Roundup has caused cancer.  At the same time, class actions have been filed against Syngenta, the manufacturer of Paraquat, for claims that the product causes Parkinson’s Disease.  Finally, AMVAC Chemical Corporation has been sued due to claims that Dacthal (DCPA) has caused birth defects.  

The debate on Crop Protection legislation concerns this type of litigation. Under the legislation being proposed in several states, as long as the federally approved pesticide includes a label with the most recent human health assessment required under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) or a label containing consistent with the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) carcinogenicity classification for the pesticide required under FIFRA this would be a sufficient warning label.  Under the legislation, this label would be enough to meet the duty to warn under state law.  This would severely limit the ability for users to sue later for alleged health issues (such as cancer or Parkinson’s Disease).  

This legislation has been signed into law in North Dakota, and as of the writing of this article, it has passed the Georgia legislature and has not been signed by the Governor.  Similar legislation is currently before the legislatures in Florida, Iowa, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. 

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Georinger, Paul. “What is Crop Protection Legislation.” Southern Ag Today 5(20.5). May 16, 2025. Permalink

A significant change to the Endangered Species Act (“ESA” or the “Act”) was proposed on April 17, 2025 which could significantly change the landscape to which ESA is applied, quite literally. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (“FWS”) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) (collectively the “Services”) propose to eliminate the current regulatory definition of “harm” under the Act. The ESA declares it unlawful for any person to “take” an endangered or threatened species. The Act defines a “take” as acts which “harass, harm, pursue, hunt, shoot, wound, kill, trap, capture, or collect, or to attempt to engage in any such conduct.”^[i]In 1995, the Services, through the regulatory rulemaking process, defined “harm” to include significant habitat modification or degradation which actually kill or injure protected species by affecting behavior patterns.^[ii] This definition has proven problematic for energy producers, agriculturalists, and foresters whose privately owned land may encompass suitable habitat for endangered or threatened species, even though the species itself may not actually be found there. 

An extreme example of this came to a head in 2001, when owners of a Louisiana tree farm brought suit against FWS for designating 1,500 acres of the privately owned farm as critical habitat under the ESA because two historical breeding sites of the protected Mississippi gopher frog were located there even though the frog had not been observed there in nearly 40 years. Despite the ESA providing the Services authority to exclude areas from critical habitat designation where the benefits of such exclusion outweigh the designation,^[iii]conflict between farmers and ranchers in the southeast and application of the ESA to habitats for protected species such as the whooping crane, eastern indigo snake, gopher tortoise, red wolf, and others has intensified. The Services now propose to rescind the current definition of “harm” under the Act, stating that it is inconsistent with the statutory language, unnecessary, and does not reflect the single best meaning of the statutory text. The Services suggest that the word “harm” in the statute is clear enough without expounding further upon the term as the current regulatory definition does.

Though not yet final, the Services’ proposal to rescind the definition of “harm” is primed for legal challenges. The proposed rule would narrow the scope of the ESA’s reach by removing mention of habitat in consideration of whether one has harmed a protected species. This would have broad implications for energy producers, ranchers, loggers, and developers across the U.S. The proposed rule is open for public comment through May 19, 2025.^[iv]

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^[i] 16 U.S.C. 1532(19) (emphasis added).

^[ii] 50 CFR 17.3. This definition was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Babbit v. Sweet Home Chapt. Comms. for Ore. 51 U.S. 687 (1995). relying on the Chevron doctrine of agency deference which has since been overturned. See Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, 603 U.S. ___ (2024).

^[iii] 16 U.S.C. 1533(b)(2).

^[iv] https://www.regulations.gov/document/FWS-HQ-ES-2025-0034-0001

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Friedel, Jennifer. “Defining Harm. Proposed Changes for the Endangered Species Act.” Southern Ag Today 5(19.5). May 9, 2025. Permalink

In the first quarter of 2025, state legislatures across the United States have proposed bills regulating cell-cultured meat, including both labeling requirements and sales restrictions. Cell-cultured meat, also known as “lab-grown meat” or even “fake meat”, is produced by cultivating animal cells in a controlled environment, offering a potential alternative to traditional livestock farming.​

Federal Oversight and Labeling

At the federal level, the regulation of cell-cultured meat involves both the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA oversees the pre-harvest production phase, while the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) manages post-harvest processing, packaging, and labeling. In 2023, FSIS authorized the sale of cell-cultured chicken produced by two California startups, marking the first-ever approval by the federal agency. The products were sold in a limited capacity though a few restaurants shortly after that approval, but are not commercially available at this time. 

Recent State-Level Legislative Actions

• Mississippi: In March, Mississippi became the third state to prohibit the manufacture, sale, or distribution of lab-grown meat. Violations of this law are classified as misdemeanors, carrying penalties of fines up to $500 and/or imprisonment for up to three months. Further, retail food establishments may lose their licenses if they sell or distribute the products.  The Mississippi law will go into effect on July 1, 2025.  This legislation aligns with similar bans enacted by Florida and Alabama in 2024.  More information about the Florida and Alabama laws is available here.   
• South Dakota: HB 1022 allows for the sale of cell cultured meat products, but requires additional language (either “cell-cultured” or “lab grown”) on the label.  It was signed into law in February.  HB 1118, also enacted in 2025, prohibits the use of any state funds in connection with the research, production, promotion, sale, or distribution of cell-cultured meat within the state, but does not apply to any institution under the control of the South Dakota Board of Regents.
• Utah: HB 138 is also a labeling law, requiring additional verbiage for “cultivated meat product[s]” or “plant or insect based meat substitute[s]” that are “reasonably certain to notify a consumer” that the food contains those ingredients.  It was signed into law in March.
• Georgia: House Bill 201, like MS, FL, and AL, would prohibit the sale of cell cultured meat within the state.  It is currently in committee.  House Bill 163 would allow for the sale of both “cell cultured meat” and “plant based meat alternative” products, but would impose requirements on food service establishments that required additional disclosures that those products are not “conventional meat products.”  It has made it through the House and is pending in the Senate.   
• South Carolina: Senate Bill 103 would prohibit labeling of cell cultured products as “beef, poultry, fish, crustacean, or any other animal protein that the cell-cultivated food product may resemble.  Additionally, the label must state that “[t]his product contains protein that was developed in a lab and grown from a biopsy of animal cells. The protein in this product is not naturally grown beef, poultry, fish, crustacean, or any other animal protein.”  The bill is currently with the Agricultural Committee. 
• Oklahoma: HB 2829 has passed the House and is currently pending in the Senate.  It would make it unlawful to “manufacture, sell, hold or offer for sale, or distribute any cultivated meat product”.  However, it would allow research on the development of those products to be conducted in the state.  There are also two additional bills that originated in and are pending in the Oklahoma Senate, both of which would impact the labeling of cell cultured products.  SB 96 would apply the labeling restrictions to both cell-cultured and “insect-protein food products”. While SB 22 focuses only on cell-cultured products, in addition to the labeling restrictions it would prohibit the manufacture of those products within the state.  
• Other states, including Colorado, Illinois, Indiana and Wyoming, have also proposed bills on this topic this year.

​While the products are not currently available to the United States consumer, legislative attention is certainly focused on how- and whether- they should be in the future.  As the market continues to evolve, an ongoing dialogue among federal and state lawmakers, industry stakeholders, and consumer advocacy groups will be crucial to establishing a framework that balances all interests.  

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Rumley, Elizabeth. “A Steak by Any Other Name: How States Are Shaping the Future of Cultivated Meat.” Southern Ag Today 5(15.5). April 11, 2025. Permalink