“Food has long served as an instrument of statecraft,” write the authors of a new paper, and it isn’t hard to find examples of food weaponised in international relations and between factions in a single country. It can foment strife, through tariffs and blockades, as easily as it can promote peace through food aid. At the same time, conflict has an outsized influence on food and agriculture, from the mythical salting of a vanquished enemy’s fields to the very real genocidal famines today.

While political scientists are well aware of the ways in which food and agriculture can be used to achieve strategic aims, agricultural economists have tended to take a narrower view, worrying more about the perceived inefficiencies of subsidising farmers. Marc Bellemare and Bernhard Dalheimer want them to expand their vision.

Notes

Marc Bellemare shared the paper on his website at The Geopolitics of Food and Agriculture.
Rather than list the many episodes Marc has helped bring to life, I’ll let you select the ones that interest you.
Here is the transcript, for which you can thank (and perhaps join) the podcast’s generous supporters.
Apologies for the rather banal cover art; abstract concepts are hard to illustrate, no matter how important.

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