Feeding Power

How can food shape the destiny of nations? With rising costs of living, housing precarity, and unprecedented food inflation evident all over the world, we’re facing a pressing need for systemic change. Feeding Power investigates the roots of these contemporary challenges through the all-encompassing lens of food. Through a multidisciplinary approach combining history, political science, and economics, leading food scientist Sylvain Charlebois examines how food systems have evolved into instruments of power and catalysts for conflict. Feeding Power traces the links between food and power and explains how food can be weaponized, with the Russian invasion of Ukraine illustrating how changes in one country’s exports can send shockwaves through global supply chains and exacerbate hunger in vulnerable regions. Throughout, the book revisits the theme of climate change as both a disruptor of traditional agricultural practices, for example in coastal countries in the Global South, as well as a driver of innovations – ranging from vertical farming to controlled-environment agriculture. It also examines the tension between food sovereignty and global interdependence, weighing the desire for national control against the politics of international trade. Feeding Power compels us all to better understand and prioritize food security and highlights the risks of failing to do so. If global food systems become more equitable and sustainable, we can build a more stable world where control over food is not a threat, but a source of shared security.