R.I. farmers and food producers get free legal help

Susan Sosnowski is a state senator, but she is also a farmer who grows vegetables and raises sheep and turkeys on 60 acres in West Kingston. So she understands the need for farmers to get legal advice on everything from contracts to licensing to estate planning, and she also understands how hard it can be for them to cover that expense.  “We often run on such thin financial margins that there isn’t extra funding to pay for attorneys,” said Sosnowski, D-South Kingstown, New Shoreham, the chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Agriculture. In a bid to bridge that gap, the Conservation Law Foundation is expanding a program to Rhode Island that offers free legal services to farms, aquaculture operations and small food businesses. The Boston-based environmental group launched its first Legal Food Hub in Massachusetts in 2014 in recognition of the financial burden that lawyers’ fees can place on food producers. A branch of the program opened in Maine last year.