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A national law firm specializing in agricultural law and crop genetics. A national law firm specializing in agricultural law and crop genetics. A national law firm specializing in agricultural law and crop genetics. A national law firm specializing in agricultural law and crop genetics.
  • What We Do
  • Who We Are
    • Joel Cape | Attorney
    • Brynn Crab | Operations Administrator
  • Media
  • Blog
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Some Highlights from Seed Congress of the Americas, and other news to ponder

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Cape Law Firm Blog

by Joel Cape

Agriculture

Some Highlights from Seed Congress of the Americas, and other news to ponder

A Few Highlights from the 10th Seed Congress of the Americas Last week was the 10th Seed Congress of the Americas in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, an event established by the Seed Association of the Americas (SAA) to advance the interests of the seed industry in North and South America. Industry professionals from around the world presented on several compelling topics, including market conditions, intellectual property protection, seed-applied technologies, gene editing, and the state of global regulation of gene editing in agriculture. Several presentations either focused on gene editing for developing new plant varieties and traits, or at least touched on the topic, demonstrating how rapidly the technology has been adopted on a broad

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Joel Cape October 13, 2025
Agriculture

Agriculture’s Antitrust Cops on the March, MAHA – Making Agriculture Happy Again, and other news

Department of Justice and USDA to Investigate Sky-High Farm Input Costs Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced yesterday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to jointly scrutinize agricultural input markets – particularly, seed, fertilizer, equipment, and fuel. With the economic conditions for row crop producers falling off a cliff, the USDA and DOJ have become keenly interested in looking into why crop production input costs have continued to rise to the point that farmers are locked into steep operating losses. The Memorandum became immediately effective and includes the option to take antitrust enforcement actions to promote competition

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Joel Cape October 7, 2025
Lawsuits

The Shared Risks of Aerial Applications and other news to ponder

Aerial Applicator Suit Demonstrates Scope of Risks The recent U.S. Fourth Circuit case of Kritter v. Mooring involving the crash of a helicopter aerial applicator shows how risks can be distributed among farm owners, renters, crop consultants, and others, and provides a guide for how to allocate those risks in custom application contracts. A landowner leased his farm to his relatives’ farming corporation. The farm corporation engaged Nutrien for various consulting services, including aerial pesticide applications. Nutrien employed a crop consultant to work with the farm corporation, and when needed, to hire aerial applicators. In 2020, the crop consultant hired Eugene Kritter, an experienced aerial applicator, to spray some of the corporation’s

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Joel Cape September 15, 2025
Soybeans
Competition & Antitrust

Brazilian Soybean Farmers Urge Anti-Competition Ruling on Breeding Incentives, and other news to ponder

Brazil’s Soy Producers Press for Anti-Competition Ruling Over Bayer’s “Breeding Incentives” Aprosoja Brasil, a powerful association of Brazilian soybean farmers, has asked for the country’s competition agency (CADE) to issue an opinion finding that Bayer’s use of “breeding incentives” to reward plant breeders is anticompetitive. The dispute concerns incentive agreements with breeders to provide rewards for adapting their varieties to Bayer’s proprietary trait platforms. The farmers contend these incentives have resulted in fewer varieties, reduced diversity and choice, and higher seed prices. CADE’s recent economic studies found that Bayer’s breeding incentives had reduced the development of soybean varieties with alternative traits and technologies. Read more here.​ Texas A&M’s Ultra-Low Gossypol

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Joel Cape September 9, 2025
Uncategorized

The Bastardization of Science

Modern agriculture is as much a scientific enterprise as it is a practical one, relying on a myriad of scientific fields, including molecular biology, plant breeding, plant pathology, entomology, veterinary medicine, mechanical engineering, geospatial informatics, and a host of others. Yet, science – the body of knowledge built by gathering evidence, testing hypotheses, making observations, and recording data – is under widespread, global assault from fraudsters. That is the frightening conclusion of a recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. According to the NAS study, scientific fraud has reached an industrial scale and continues to grow at an astonishing pace. A large part of the problem

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Swasti Jain August 29, 2025
Uncategorized

Dicamba Turns Into the Homestretch for a Comeback

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a Memorandum on July 22, announcing the Agency’s “proposed” decision to re-register three dicamba herbicides (Tavium, KHNP0090, and Engenia) for over-the-top (OTT) application to dicamba-tolerant soybeans and cotton. While not quite final, the Agency’s foregone decision to re-register dicamba comes just barely a month after the appointment of Kyle Kunkler as the EPA’s top pesticide officer (Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention). Before his appointment, Kunkler was employed as a lobbyist for the American Soybean Association (ASA) and was a strong advocate for the herbicide. Indeed, ASA, along with Plains Cotton Growers, filed a lawsuit against the EPA even after it approved dicamba, arguing that

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joelcape August 27, 2025
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