“Food has long served as an instrument of statecraft,” write the authors of a new paper, and it isn’t hard to find examples of food weaponised in international relations and between factions in a single country. It can foment strife, through tariffs and blockades, as easily as it can promote peace through food aid. At the same time, conflict has an outsized influence on food and agriculture, from the mythical salting of a vanquished enemy’s fields to the very real genocidal famines today.

While political scientists are well aware of the ways in which food and agriculture can be used to achieve strategic aims, agricultural economists have tended to take a narrower view, worrying more about the perceived inefficiencies of subsidising farmers. Marc Bellemare and Bernhard Dalheimer want them to expand their vision.

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