Elsewhere in this newsletter I have written a Letter From the Chair explaining what the relatively new Food Law Section Council has been able to achieve in CLE programming since its inception in 2019. As explained, a highlight of this ISBA year has been jointly sponsoring a CLE with the University of Illinois’ College of Agriculture and Consumer Economics (ACES) and the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, September 2022. Historically known as the Bock Agricultural Law & Policy Program Symposium, the Food Law Section Council was a willing and valuable co-sponsor – and intends to do so again in 2023.

While I highlighted some of the topics we covered in the 2022 Bock Symposium, the keynote speaker was so dynamic she bears more substantial treatment. Professor Susan Schneider, Director of the L.L.M. Program in Agricultural & Food Law, University of Arkansas School of Law addressed the participants, via zoom, on the topic: “Climate Change Disruptions: Challenges in Formulating a National Food Policy.”

Quoting from the USDA’s website, specifically the 2018 National Climate Assessment, Professor Schneider explained how rising temperatures, extreme heat, drought, wildfires, and downpours will continue to create disruptions to agricultural productivity in the U.S – increasingly causing challenges to livestock health, declines in crop yields and quality – and threatening rural livelihoods, food security and price stability.

She explained how the direct impacts caused by elevated temperatures, scarce water resources, and extreme weather will impact crops and livestock. Her point was that the concentration of production in the U.S. makes our food system even more vulnerable, citing as just one example the concentration of production of certain foods in California and the southwest.

Calling for a new national food policy, Professor Schneider dubbed the Farm Bill – as “farm policy, but not food policy” – “food safety policies but not food security policies”. She examined the lack of coordinated diet, health and agriculture policies and spoke of the lack of coordinated policy regarding food production challenges that result from climate change. While she indicated there was increasing support for regional food systems, she noted an “insufficient impetus for the scale of change needed”.

She challenged participants to think about and lawmakers to address the following difficult questions: How to prioritize crops that make best use of limited water resources (the cotton, gourd, alfalfa problem); How to design disaster assistance and government-subsidized insurance that support farmers without encouraging unsustainable crops in vulnerable areas (the crop insurance for lost crops in wet areas problem); How to address water shortages, allocating fairly between urban and rural spaces (should food crops be prioritized?); How to (whether to?) limit government interference with market influences; How to prioritize healthy crops to address systemic health issues present in the US population.

We thank Professor Schneider for her thought-provoking presentation – and look forward to more exciting presentations at our next co-sponsored Bock Symposium, on September 15 in Chicago.