I f you were to believe newspapers and dietary advice leaflets, you’d probably think that doctors and nutritionists are the people guiding us through the thicket of what to believe when it comes to food. But food trends are far more political – and economically motivated – than it seems. From ancient Rome, where Cura Annonae – the provision of bread to the citizens – was the central measure of good government, to 18th- century Britain, where the economist Adam Smith identified a link between wages and the price of corn, food has been at the center of the economy. Politicians have long had their eye on food policy as a way to shape society. That’s why tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and grain were enforced in Britain between 1815 and 1846. These “corn laws” enhanced the profits and political power of the landowners, at the cost of raising food prices and hampering growth in other economic sectors.
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Over in Ireland, the ease of growing the recently imported potato plant led to most people living off a narrow and repetitive diet of homegrown potato with a dash of milk. When potato blight arrived, a million people starved to death, even as the country continued to produce large amounts of food – for export to England. Such episodes well illustrate that food policy has often been a fight between the interests of the rich and the poor. No wonder Marx declared that food lay at the heart of all political structures and warned of an alliance of industry and capital intent on both controlling and distorting food production. VEGAN WARS Many of today’s food debates can also be usefully reinterpreted when seen as part of a wider economic picture. For example, recent years have seen the co-option of the vegetarian movement in a political program that can have the effect of perversely disadvantaging small-scale, traditional farming in favor of large-scale industrial farming.
By Martin Cohen and Frédéric Leroy
American Consequences
57
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