Jennifer Clapp

So it's concentrated in specific locations.

At that time, we saw grain markets go crazy because Russia and Ukraine collectively supply a huge proportion of the global export market, but also fertilizers coming from Russia and Belarus were disrupted.

Indeed, supply chain disruptions were leading to higher prices, but prices went up so sharply and so quickly, and also beyond

what you would think would normally happen.

And it turns out that the corporations were even, some of them, bragging to their own shareholders in their annual reports that they were able to increase prices that they were charging to farmers beyond their own price increases.

And if you look carefully at the profit data, you see that not only were the

overall net profits of the firms rising quite sharply through that period, but their marginal rate of profit was also rising.

So they were able to increase the rate and increase their overall profits by a huge amount.

And this led to widespread concern among farmers that they were basically being way overcharged for their fertilizer.

And they were

actively complaining about this.

And this did reach the level, especially in the US, we saw that under the Biden administration, there was an effort to look closely at these complaints by farmers.

So they were able to get that on the radar.

We're basically calling for what we call resilient self-reliance.

We're basically saying that the disposal of all the policies that allowed states to take a role in smoothing markets, in managing markets for food security, that was taken away.

And states need to reclaim those kind of policies, but to do so in a way that's

resilient, fair and just.

We're not just saying, oh, states need to get back into the business of managing markets just for the sake of it.

We're saying, no, it needs to be done in the context of, you know, not dispersing all trade, but to trade in ways that is mutually beneficial and with norms of fair trade, but also to do so in ways that support ecological agricultural production.

It's not just saying, oh, states need to get back into supporting agriculture through industrial models.