Law Commons^™

Agricultural Secrecy: Going Dark Down On The Farm: How Legalized Secrecy Gives Agribusiness A Federally Funded Free Ride, Rena I. Steinzor, Yee Huang

Faculty Scholarship

This briefing paper examines the agricultural secrecy granted by section 1619 of the 2008 Farm Bill, its implications for transparency and oversight, and its impact on other federal agencies such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In an era of fiscal responsibility, tight budgets, and increasing pressure on the environment, the public has a right to know whether the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is making the best decisions about how to allocate public funds.

Each year, agricultural producers in the United States receive billions of dollars in federal payments: crop subsidies, crop insurance, conservation payments, disaster payments, loans, …

Personal Environmental Information: The Promise And Perils Of The Emerging Capacity To Identify Individual Environmental Harms, Katrina Fischer Kuh

Elisabeth Haub School of Law Faculty Publications

This Article begins from the premise that successful regulation of environmentally significant individual behaviors could achieve meaningful environmental benefits and argues that (1) technology is increasingly making information about individual environmental behaviors and associated harms more accessible; (2) better information about environmentally significant individual behaviors could substantially enhance fledgling efforts to regulate those behaviors; and (3) use of technology-enabled personal environmental information in support of regulation will require the resolution of myriad privacy concerns. The Article seeks to generate and inform a discussion about the appropriate balance between access to personal environmental information and privacy by identifying how regulation can …