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Why Are Food Policy Debates So Bitter?

 

 

For the same reason debates about which band is best in a given category usually end in a screaming match: because (i) to quote Nietzsche, God is dead, and (ii) people see the foods they eat as an expression of their identity and thus become ego-invested in certain foods. Like Paarlberg (2013) notes on pp. 182-183 in the second edition of his Food Politics (a must-read for anyone interested in food and agricultural policy):

Groups in society have always sought solidarity through the foods they eat, or the foods they agree not to eat. Within most religious traditions, patterns of food consumption are carefully regulated. …

In today’s less religious world, we should not be surprised to see the emergence of new food rules to express solidarity around secular values. The new rules that emerge (organic, local, or slow) may be attractive or practical only for relatively small subcategories of citizens, or perhaps only for a small part of the diet of those citizens, but the exclusivity and difficulty of the rule can be part of its attraction. The goal is to express through the diets we adopt a solidarity with others who share our identity, our values, or our particular life circumstances. The scientific for these modern food rules may at times be weak, but the social value can nonetheless be strong.

Rising Food Prices, Food Price Volatility, and Social Unrest, Revisited

It has been a while since I wrote about the relationship between food prices and food riots, which remains one of the reasons why many of you have discovered this blog or my Twitter feed.

That’s because for the past 10 months, my paper on food prices and food riots was going through the editorial process at the American Journal of Agricultural Economics (AJAE), the top journal in my field, where it was conditionally accepted last Thursday. You can find the conditionally accepted version here, warts and all. Here are the highlights of the paper:

“Reconsidering Development” Journal — Call for Submissions

One of the things I do at the University of Minnesota is serve as faculty advisor for a group called Interdisciplinary Perspectives on International Development (IPID).

As its name indicates, IPID’s mission is to get people together to talk about development from a variety of perspectives. So for example, one of the events IPID is organizing this year will feature Colby College’s Laura Seay (perhaps equally well-known as @texasinafrica), who will be giving a public lecture in April that will be open to the entire University of Minnesota community.

Another thing IPID does is run a student journal called Reconsidering Development. Their most recent call for papers landed in my inbox last week, and I thought some readers of this blog might be interested in submitting an article for publication: