Food is one of the great bedrocks of human existence. Given its primacy to survival, it has also increasingly become a locus for conflict, either due to famine or as an exploitable vulnerability of even the most powerful countries. Russia’s war on Ukraine made it clear that grain could be fought over in the battle for supremacy, with the whole world dependent on the outcome.

Today, we have a special episode of the podcast. Our Riskgaming designer Ian Curtiss hosts Alicia Ellis, an Air Force veteran who is now the director of the Master of Arts in Global Security program at Arizona State University. She and her husband own a regenerative farm in Phoenix’s East Valley, and she has specialized in the future of American agricultural security in her own research. She’s also designing a game of her own, called New War, to highlight the complex interplay of challenges that come with new forms of warfare and particularly so-called “gray zone” tactics.

Ian and Alicia talk about what it’s like to farm in the twenty-first century, Russia and Ukraine’s grain production, Covid-19 and beef prices, and the complete abdication of government investment in the future security of the food supply.