Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The committee met the afternoon of Nov. 5th at the Kierland Resort.  During the meeting the focus was in on the regional conference from two weeks before discussing what worked and what could be improved. At the same time, the team also welcomed Adam Rabinowitz from Auburn University to discuss research he is leading and working with others on this team related to agricultural bankruptcy.  At the same time, he discussed his work and projects on heirs property and the team began to look at ways to bring in more ag economists into the project specifically focused in on our research areas for the project.

During the American Ag Law meetings the project submitted a number of sessions with a few selected for the larger program.  The venue is selected since many of our colleagues attend the meetings and we are continuing to work on recruitment to better highlight how this can help with research collaboration. 

Short-term outcomes: 

Outputs: The project continued to deliver outputs in 2025.  The team collaborated with two University of Maryland, Baltimore law students.  One focused on heirs property and allowed the team to do a literature review on existing research related to addressing the issue of heirs property on agricultural and forested lands. The team was able to use this to begin exploring avenues of new research to think about additional ways to allow those with heirs property to retain ownership of the land.  At the same time, the student was instrumental in conducting structured interviews with existing clinics focused on free will clinics and heir's property clinics.  The team is working to compile those results into a journal article for publication in 2026 on how state land grant universities could work with local non-profit legal services to develop heir's property clinics across the US.  This work has allowed one team member to secure NE SARE funding to train service providers to better work and address issues with owners of heirs property.

On the agritourism front, the UMB student was successful in helping the team do a through case law review of existing agritourism cases, developing out what issues existed in those cases and the types of activities.  This has been fed into existing grant work on this front being used by all the schools apart of the project.  This work will be built into planned extension publications for agritourism operations in the region.

With environmental and labor, the team has continued deliver Extension fact sheets and peer reviewed online publications, through Southern Ag Today focused in on this issues.  The collaboration of this project has yielded these publications and the interactiions of the team members on email has contributed. 

Finally, the last output was conducting a successful Mid-Atlantic Ag and Natural Resources Law Conference in October at the National Conservation Training Center in Shepardstown WV.  This conference was planned by Penn State University, Ohio State University, West Virginia University, University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, and NC State University.  The conference was attended by 52 attorneys, Extension faculty, law students, lenders, and farmers in the area.  Topics covered included solar development, local zoning regulations as it relates to agritourism, ag policy update, conservation easements, estate planning, and a session on the ethics related to AI.  The team is already prepping for the 2026 conference to hopefully be held at the same location in September of 2026.  The conference was supported through funding available through Va. Tech.  This helped us meet a milestone of delivering a regional conference and the team is looking at how to partner with the American Ag Law Association when they are on the East Coast hosting their annual conference in 2027 to conduct a national meeting focused on these issues. 

Richardson, Jesse. Heirs Property in WV. NE SARE Service Provider Award.  $ 238,463.00.  3/1/25 to 11/30/27

Bruce, Nate and Paul Goeringer.  Exploring H2A Farm Labor in the Mid-Atlantic Region, NE Extension Risk Management Education Center.  $56,673. 4/1/25 to 9/30/26.