News
Ag mediation services housed at MCMA
The Michigan Community Mediation Association will offer free mediation services to farmers for at least the next two years.
The Michigan Agriculture Mediation Program is awarded through a grant process with USDA which Executive Director Gabriella Reihanian Havlicek tells Brownfield allows farmers to handle disputes outside of court.
“Any kind of issue that a farmer is having we can mediate,” she says. “It can be an adverse determination from the USDA, them going through bankruptcy, it can be resolving a neighbor dispute.”
The program brings farmers and other parties to a mediator to solve disputes through a confidential settlement process.
“It’s a binding contract and so if somebody does not abide by the terms of the contract, they can go to court and sue them for breach, or what we recommend is that they come back to mediation,” she says.
