agriculture
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 337 U.S. 755 - Farmers Reservoir & Irrigation Co. v. McComb · 1949Most cited · 535 citing opinions
has two distinct branches. First, there is the primary meaning. Agriculture includes farming in all its branches. Certain specific practices such as cultivation and tillage of the soil, dairying, etc., are listed as being included in this primary meaning. Second, there is the broader meaning. Agriculture is defined to include things other than farming as so illustrated. It includes any practices, whether or not themselves farming practices, which are performed either by a farmer or on a farm, incidently to or in conjunction with 'such' farming operations.
How the Supreme Court has restated “agriculture”
Each Supreme Court definition of “agriculture,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “agriculture”
Court decisions citing the 3 opinions that defined “agriculture” — 990 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 3 definitions, chronological · 1949–1956
its coverage was broadened until it became coterminous with the sum of those activities necessary in the cultivation of crops, their harvesting, and their 'preparation for market, delivery to storage or to market or to carriers for transportation to market.
FLSA exemption · construing 29 U.S.C. § 201 · Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938
What we said in Waialua concerning sugar milling is apt here: a process that results in such important changes is 'more akin to manufacturing than to agriculture.