There’s a lot of power in food and food systems. This episode explores the centralization of that power, particularly the ways in which corporations and governments operate and control spaces of production and transformation. The issue of Canadian Food Studies in focus is Vol. 2, No. 2 (2015), including its subsection, “Financialization in the Food System,” which our guest, Jennifer Clapp, co–guest edited. Alexia Moyer shares learnings from Brian Brett’s book, Trauma Farm, and PhD student Heidi Janes responds to a selection of CFS articles about corporate power.

Guests:

Alexia Moyer is co-Managing Editor of Canadian Food Studies and a founding member of the editorial collective, red line-ligne rouge, based in Montreal.

Jennifer Clapp is a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo. She is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems as well as the Scientific Advisory Committee of the UN Food Systems Coordination Hub.

Heidi Janes is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Victoria, where she researches corporate power in the food system and how philanthropic and humanitarian logics play roles in the political economy.

Mentioned in this episode:

Food by Jennifer Clapp

Titans of Industrial Agriculture by Jennifer Clapp

IPES-Food "Land Squeeze" Report

“Watt” on Wikipedia

Credits:

Host/Producer: David Szanto

Executive Producers: Rachel Engler-Stringer, Laurence Godin, Charles Levkoe, Phil Loring, Kristen Lowitt

Music: Alex Guz and Evgeny Bardyuzha and freesound_community on Pixabay

Sound Effects: Aviana_Phoenix and BenKirb on Pixabay

Image: Johnson Martin on Pixabay

#DigestingFoodStudies

Digesting Food Studies is funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Lakehead University, and the Canadian Association for Food Studies.