An essential book for understanding the challenges facing the world’s food supply.

The war in Ukraine and climate change have finally made us realise that food systems are more fragile than ever. The Covid crisis has boosted the relocation of agricultural production, but at the same time, multinational food companies have never been so powerful.

How is this battle of the titans taking place above our plates? What policies (local and global) are being advocated to ensure food security? How can we hope to solve the problem of hunger? These and many other questions put the geopolitics of food at the heart of debates on a future full of uncertainty.

Table of contents

Introduction

Why a geopolitics of food?  

The haunting question of food security

A question of supply and demand?

Globalisation and the geography of taste

Chapter 1 The links between food and politics

A long history (two cases: Rome, the Great Discoveries)

Major agricultural crises and revolutions

Famines: the Irish famine (1848)

Current policies (health, agro-industry)

Internationalisation through markets

Chapter 2 Food is not just a question of agriculture       

Scientists under influence

Why “agri” and “food”?

What are the main food systems?

Chapter 3 All food products are geopolitical 

Cereals and tubers

Beverages under control: from wines and spirits to soft drinks

Terroirs: highly political boundaries

Chapter 4 The war of taste or geopolitics on the plate

Good taste resists

The space that gives taste to what we eat

A taste that becomes geopolitical

Constrained taste, constructed taste

What are the cities of gastronomy for?

Chapter 5 Markets turned upside down               

Impossible international regulation