Industries

Agribusiness

We advise clients throughout the agriculture industry on a broad range of legal needs. Our group includes lawyers with comprehensive transactional, regulatory, financial, strategic, and corporate experience who have strong ties to the agricultural community.

Our firm’s cross-disciplinary teams work together to provide holistic representation to our agribusiness clients. The team understands the specific business, market, and regulatory risks clients face and partners with business leaders to reduce those risks.

We represent producer cooperatives, agriscience companies, agribusiness technology companies, growers, lenders, developers, biofuels companies, ag suppliers and business partners, and others in the industry. We also represent venture capital firms, private equity firms, and others who invest in this rapidly evolving industry. Our work for these clients spans agricultural and cooperative law, commercial transactions, litigation, state and federal environmental law, labor and employment, securities, tax, finance, and related disciplines.

Experience 

Transactional

  • Represented AgCountry Farm Credit Services in matters involving loans to agribusiness interests, including large-scale dairy producers, biofuels producers, and others. These loans ranged from $10 million to $700 million, and our work involved preparing and negotiating the loan and security documents, and work-out and collection matters.
  • Represented Minn-Dak Farmers Cooperative, a sugar beet cooperative in North Dakota and Minnesota, in corporate, securities, debt finance, environmental, and litigation matters for over 20 years.

Litigation

  • Defending a global agriculture company in antitrust class actions in which the plaintiffs allege a group boycott among agricultural manufacturers, wholesalers, and large retailers in the U.S.
  • Obtained and collected a substantial arbitration award in favor of a grain buyer against a grain producer in a proceeding before the National Grain and Feed Association.

Intellectual Property

  • Leading worldwide patent preparation and prosecution for a global agriculture company with collaborators for hybrid seed technology and genetically modified organisms, including genetically modified crops with insect and herbicide resistance.
  • Serve as lead patent counsel for a U.S. microbial inoculant company dedicated to compounds and compositions that modify and enhance plant and crop production.