Miller Magazine Issue: 149 May 2022

90 INTERVIEW MILLER / MAY 2022 How could this affect exporters of similar foods? The relationship between food, fuel and fertilizer pric- es makes this difficult to predict. It can be easy to assume that exporters of the same or substitute commodities will benefit from redirected demand resulting from the loss of Ukrainian and Russian imports. This will happen to a de- gree for exporters of some commodities in the immedi- ate term, but the longer-term reality is more complicated. Farmers plant crops months before a harvest. They can’t simply ramp up production in response to sudden demand as you might at, say, a factory. Take wheat as an example. Most wheat grown in the United States is “winter wheat,” planted in the fall and harvested the following summer, so the current crop was planted before the invasion. There’s no immediate-term response that can make up for the loss of Black Sea exports. As for planting decisions going for- ward, higher prices for wheat and corn will be undercut by higher fertilizer and fuel prices. So far at least, it’s not clear that farmers intend to respond to tighter wheat or corn markets by planting more acres of those crops. In fact, the opposite might be true. According to USDA’s most recent survey of farmers’ planting intentions since the invasion, farmers intend to plant more soybeans (which require less fertilizer) and less spring wheat and corn, notwithstanding the potentially high prices for those crops because of the war in Ukraine. On top of all of this, some large exporters will be hesitant to export crops they have in reserve out of fear that they will have inadequate food for domestic con- sumption over the long term. You and your students recently discussed these issues in class. Can you describe what resulted? In my course, we consider how laws and legal rules contribute to the governance and organization of the industrial food econo- my. As the invasion began and food commodity prices began to soar, we were discussing the food price crises in the 1970s and mid-2000s as part of our consideration of the long-term implica- tions of foreign food aid and surplus management programs. So it made sense to bring the world into the classroom, so to speak. The assignment was straightforward: research the food system implications of the war, both generally and with a focus on a par- ticular region. One of my students considered the impact of the loss of Ukrainian feed imports on the European meat and dairy industry, including whether Europe would step back from re- cently adopted sustainability initiatives in order to boost agricul- tural production. Another student considered whether Brazilian efforts to secure fertilizer locally would result in increased mining and destruction of indigenous land. There was no shortage of good ideas — there never is with UVA Law students — but the goal wasn’t to brainstorm how we can manage or get out of the immediate crisis. The goal was to give the students a chance to learn about how sweeping an impact the war will have on food systems across the world, and to reflect on how an industrial food economy that laws helped to design could be so vulnera- ble in the first place. What issues should we keep an eye on? A few issues in the immediate term are important to watch. The first is the extent to which countries respond to rising com-