From left to right, Aija Zamurs, Emily Collins, Joe Anderson, Julia Wickham, Maggie Kaniecki, Nicole Renna,
Olivia Bayne, and Hanna Silva
The Summer Honors Internship Program at Vermont Law and Graduate School’s Center for Agriculture and Food Systems provides students from VLGS and law schools around the country the opportunity to work alongside faculty, staff, and project partners on agriculture and food systems law and policy issues.
Joe Anderson, a 2L at VLGS, is working on the Food System Social Enterprise Portfolio, addressing common questions from food system business start-ups in an accessible format. Joe is researching and creating an interactive course on business entity choice. He is also providing direct legal services to food system cooperative business clients.
Olivia Bayne, a 2L at VLGS, is splitting her time between the State Farm to School Policy Handbook and the Farmers Market Legal Toolkit. Olivia is working in partnership with the National Farm to School Network to update the State Farm to School Policy Handbook, which outlines legislation from across the United States that promotes gardens, food and agriculture education, and local food procurement in schools. She is also updating the Farmers Market Legal Toolkit section on federal SNAP/EBT programs. The Farmers Market Legal Toolkit is a project of CAFS, the Farmers Market Coalition, and NOFA-VT.
Emily Collins, a Master of Food and Agriculture Law and Policy (MFALP) candidate at VLGS, and Margaret Kaniecki, a 2L at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, are researching and analyzing urban agriculture policy to support a larger local and regional food systems policy project funded by the USDA’s Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production. Emily and Margaret are researching urban agriculture policy in 17 USDA-identified urban agriculture hubs across the country. This research supports the eventual creation of an online information center on local policies impacting urban agriculture.
Nicole Renna, a 3L, former food and agriculture clinician, and MFALP candidate at VLGS, is partnering with the Center for Community Land Trust Innovation to build a database of state laws governing shared equity models of land and home ownership. The database will equip land trust staff, partners, lawmakers, and policy professionals to craft bills in their own jurisdictions that support access to land.
Hanna Silva, a 3L at Brooklyn Law School, is contributing to a report on catch share programs with the North American Marine Alliance. Catch shares are a fishery management approach that divides the allowable catch of a particular species into assigned allotments for fishers. Hanna is building on previous student work to identify opportunities for reform in catch share program design to increase equity.
Julia Wickham, a 2L at VLGS, is creating a guide to technology stewardship agreements, which are contracts that growers sign to access seeds whose intellectual property is owned by large agrichemical companies. Julia is partnering with the University of Wisconsin – Madison.
Aija Zamurs, a 2L at American University Washington College of Law, is working alongside Julia on issues related to seeds. She is also collaborating with Impact Justice and the Center for Science in the Public Interest to draft a law and policy scan and recommendations related to prison food in the Mid-Atlantic. This work builds on CAFS’ previous report, The State of Prison Food in New England.