Emma Rothschild

There is no doctrine more deceptive than the new idea that food is power. According to the doctrine, the United States has new power in the world by virtue of its position as the largest producer and exporter of food: in particular, over those developing countries, from the most destitute states to the richest oil-exporting countries, which import American food. The doctrine of food as power is deluded for several reasons. It promises an impossible form of influence. And it nurtures a false view of what has happened in the food crisis of the 1970s; of the political consequences of the crisis; of the even more fearsome consequences to come.