№ 727. Food Security in the 21st Century

UN Food and Agriculture Organization

The notches in the pattern are geographically disparate and murky, but they underscore one point: what oil was to the 20th century, food and water will be to the 21st – precious, geopolitically powerful and contested. “The 20th century had Opec,” says Halverson in the film. . “In the future, we’re going to have Food Pec.”

That trend is already under way, from Mexico’s avocado militias to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which the film argues was motivated, in part, by Putin’s desire to control a bread basket. The Grab has the feeling of a revelation, though the reveal is not a conspiracy; the pattern is less a plan than a series of reactions, from a variety of actors, to the fact that every single human needs food and water, and there is not enough arable land on Earth for the projected increase of 2 billion people by 2050. The instinct, on a primal and national level, is to hoard.