Globalisation of Food: Politics, Economy and Society
Kwong Chi Man
History Department, Hong Kong Baptist University
Lecture Outline:
 Food: Simple Matter of Demand and Supply?
 Globalisation of Food, 1492-1939
 Food and the World Wars
 Globalisation of Food after 1945:



Economy
Politics
Society
Lecture Notes
Food: Simple Matter of Demand and Supply?
 Age of Plenty
 Food for a farm labourer, Britain, 1796
 Bread
 Little bit of bacon
 Sometimes with potatoes
 A bit cheese
 Beer, sugared tea, and “tiny quantities of milk”
 The meals of a mill worker, Britain, 1876
 Monday: a bit of cold meat
 Tuesday: a hash (mix of diced meat, potatoes, and spices)
 Wednesday: a potato pie
 Thursday: fry liver and onions
 Friday: potted meat
 Saturday: sausage
 With potatoes, bread, and beverages such as tea, beer, and milk
 A blogger’s meal, Hong Kong, 2012
 Roasted pig
 Fried crab leg
 Stir-fried shrimp
 Dried scallop
 Shark fin soup
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 Abalone with goose palm
 Steamed Grouper
 Crispy Chicken
 Shanghai dumplings
 Braised noodles
 Famine Cases After 1945
 Food: solely economic issue?
 Human rights issue?
 “The Freedom from Want” – Four Freedoms of Franklin Roosevelt, US
President, 1941
 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health
and well-being of himself and of his family, including food…(Article
25).
 International dimension
 Global movement of food and ideas
 International trade
 Politics and International relations
 Social dimension
 Class
 Eating habit as an expression of class identity


Ethnicity and Identity
 National identity and national cuisine
 Regional culture
Culture
 Globalisation
 Glocalisation
Globalisation of Food, 1493-1939
 Age of Discovery, 1493-1850


Trade and Colonialism
Movement of food from the Americas to Eurasia
 Sugarcane, spice, fruits…
 Potato and Maize
 Population increase
 The Mid-Nineteenth Century to WWI
 Increase in productivity
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
Staple food – wheat, barley, rice…

Meat – (16kg per person/year in 1870 – 50+kg per person/year in
1914)
 Industrialisation
 Dehydration
 Pasteurisation
 Refrigeration
 Canning
 Transportation
 Railway and steamships
 Emergence of large corporations and lobby groups
 E.g. United Fruit Company, 1899-1970 and Meat Union
 Marketing and consumerism
 International trade – Free Trade
 Free trade and division of labour
 Banana republics (monoculture)
 South America and Australia
 Migration and changing diet
 Sell goods and buy food/ Grow food and buy goods? - Autarchy or
Globalisation?
 German example (1870-1914):
 Contexts: German farmers vs. major exporters of grain (USA, Russia
and Canada); population increase; industrialisation; urbanisation;
decrease of agricultural pop; political structure of Germany
 Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck introduced import tariff of grain to
protect farmers and land owning class (Junkers) – high price for
imported food
 Attempt to dismantle tariff battier failed - conservative opposition
 Vicious cycle: increasingly difficult to feed the working population with
homegrown food – increased reliance on import – unwilling to break
tariff barrier
Food and the World Wars
 Germany
 Context: Unable to sustain itself during the First World War under
British blockade – “Turnip Winter”: near-famine in 1917; 750,000 died
of malnutrition
 Autarchy vs Free trade? Debate in the 1920s
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 Argument of Autarchy won
 Supported by right-wing movements
 The Nazis and Food
 Reich Food Corporation – total state control since 1933
 “Blood and soil”: Race, agriculture, and Lebensraum
 Understood the inability to feed the Germans during wartime –
attack the Soviet Union!
 Generalplan Ost, 1940
 Japan
 Context: Rapid modernisation after 1868

Changing eating habits
 More animal protein
 Increase in rice consumption
 25% increase from 1890s to 1914
 Reliance on colonial supply: Korea and Taiwan
 Still not enough!
 Manchuria – “Plan for the Settlement of One Million Households
over Twenty Years”
 China and Southeast Asia
 Italy
 Battle for Grain 1920s
 Allies attempt to coordinate food
 Combined Food Board (Anglo-American Cooperation)
 Attempts to increase production – idea of nutrition science
 Still, famine in India
 Meals of the Soldiers, WWII
 Axis
 Allies
Globalisation of Food after 1945: Economy

Post 1945 socio-economic development
 Relative peace
 Population increase
 Industrialisation and urbanisation
 Increase in wealth
 Change in lifestyle
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
Multinationals
 Technological change
 Agri-chemistry
 Hybrids
 Packaging
 Refrigerating
 Transport
 Example: factory ships
 The Problem of Distribution
 Uneven distribution
 Obesity in developed countries

Famines around the world
 Causes
 Natural disaster
 Internal and international politics
 International trade
Globalisation of Food after 1945: Politics
 World food situation in 1945
 The overall amount of food available to the world: 12% less than
before the war – and a drought broke out in 1946


Many had less than half of what they had in 1945 than in 1939
Europe
 Production was only 36% of the prewar level
 Germany: 1,000 calories per person per day in cities
 Some Germans lost a pound a day in 1946
 2 million died in the Soviet Union
 Even Britain had to introduce rationing in 1945
 Asia
 Famine in China, Korea, Java, and Vietnam
 30 million in China suffered from under-nourishment
 100,000 starved to death in Tokyo three months after the war
 The Americas
 Food as Cold War Weapon
 Berlin Airlift, 1948
 Marshall Plan VS Warsaw Pact
 Relief package (CARE) from the USA
 Politics of Aid
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
Abundance as propaganda: Hong Kong

Chinese food and water: Hong Kong
 East Pearl River Water
 Ng Fung Hong
 Food trains during the 1967 Riot
US food policy in Hong Kong
 (Enhancement of the) economic, social and political conditions
in Hong Kong that will continue to contrast favourably with
conditions in Communist China – “Statement of US Policy on
Hong Kong,” NSC6007, 1960
 US food aid to Hong Kong (P.L.480) – all American outputs

 4 million USD (30,400,000USD in 2011) per annum between
1958-1961
 1 million under refugee program
 0.8 million under information program
 0.027 million under educational exchange
 International Cooperation Attempts (By UN)
 The International Institute of Agriculture, 1905-1945
 Combined Food Board during the Second World War
 United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, 1943 (Hot Spring
Conference)
 Not only about food aid
 Also put forward the idea of eating healthily
 The idea of Food Board
 Put forward by John Boyd Orr, British nutritionist, who was elected
as the director-general of the FAO in 1946
 To “reconfigure the world’s political economy by organizing it
scientifically, according to human need, not profit”
 The idea of continuing the Food Board during the Second World
War to coordinate production and distribution of food
 Opposed by the US State Department
 Food and Agriculture Organisation, 1945 World Food Programme, 1961
 World Food Conference, 1974
 World Food Council, 1974-1993
 World Summit on Food Security, 1996, 2002, 2009
 International Cooperation Attempts (By Others)
 World Trade organization, 1993
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
Global Food Security Program (World Bank), 2010

European Union
 European Food Safety Authority
 Work Done
 Food aid
 Setting standards
 Food safety
 Market regulation
 Removal of trade barrier
 Sharing technology
 Joint research
 Dissemination
 Limitations of Cooperation
 Processes of reaching international agreements

Tensions
 Politics within the international organisations
 States vs. States
 States vs. Corporations and interest groups
 Politics within the states
 States vs. individuals
 Corporations vs. individuals

Other Causes
 Political
 Internal situation in countries
 Multinational and agricultural interests
 Lack of consensus among countries
 Politics of food aid
 Technological and Economic
 Trade and food aid
 Bottleneck in production

 Speculation and trade barrier
 Oil price and food fuel
 New technology vs. vested interest
Example: “Bare Shelf” Policy of 1944
 US Department of Agriculture vs US Military and UN Relief and
Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)
 Dept. of Agriculture wanted to reduce production to protect
the US farming interest from overproduction
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 Food
administrators
encouraged
the
production
and
consumption of meat – instead of producing enough grain for
the starving European population
 USA unable to provide enough grain for the starving European
countries in 1946 – had to be helped by countries such as
Britain and Canada
VI: Globalisation of Food after 1945: Society
 Prices of Increased Productivity
 Environmental
 Wastage






Impact of agriculture on environment
Carbon footprint of food
Loss of biodiversity
Obesity
 Over-consumption
 Health cost
Entrenched interests
 American Meat Institute, National
American Association of Meat Processors
Twisting of taste
Meat
Association,
 Standardisation of flavour
 Artificial flavour
 Cultural and Class Dimensions
 National cuisine and regional food?
 Class dimension of food?
 Conservation VS tradition
 Whale hunting in Japan: a means to get protein quickly after the
Second World War
 Now seen as a traditional institutional that should not be
abandoned
 Employment
 Vested interest
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Major Documents
1. President Franklin Roosevelt’s Four Freedom (Freedom from Want), 1941
http://fdr4freedoms.org/categories/the-four-freedoms-then-and-now
2. Declaration of the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture, 1943
(although the title of the website is 1942, it should be 1943)
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1942/420608a.html
3. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Preamble), 1948
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
4. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 25), 1948
http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml#a25
5. Transcript of Marshall Plan, 1948
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=82&page=transcript
6. UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (The Founding of FAO)
http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/p4228e/P4228E04.htm
7. World Food Programme, Resolution of UN General Assembly 16th Session, 1961
http://www.worldlii.org/int/other/UNGARsn/1961/127.pdf
8. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (Article 11), 1966
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cescr.htm
9. Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, UN World
Food Conference, 1974
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/malnutrition.htm
10. Rome Declaration on World Food Security, 1996
http://www.fao.org/docrep/003/w3613e/w3613e00.htm
References
1. Alexander Nützenadel and Frank Trentman, Food and Globalization: Consumption,
Markets and Politics in the Modern World, (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2008)
2. Kenneth Kiple, A Movable Feast: Ten Millennia of Food Globalization, (Cambridge;
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New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007)
3. Lizzie Collingham, The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food, (New
York: Penguin Press, 2012)
4. Martin Schain, The Marshall Plan: Fifty Years After, (New York: Palgrave, 2001)
5. “The Broad Picture: Historical Developments and Present Situation,” World
agriculture: Towards 2015/2030, An FAO perspective, 2003
http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/y4252e/y4252e00.htm#TopOfPage
6. For God's Sake, Please Stop the Aid!” Der Spiegel Online:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/spiegel-interview-with-african-econ
omics-expert-for-god-s-sake-please-stop-the-aid-a-363663.html
7. BBC Two, The Foods that Make Billions (Documentary)
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