HIST 374 – Food Security: History of an Idea

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations has held that “food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.” This course is a history of food insecurity as a material condition and a geopolitical concept for explaining uneven access to provisions. Although we begin with the emergence of food security as a concept during World War II, we will spend the majority of the course studying other ways of organizing access to the means of subsistence. Topics discussed will include why human beings share food, the invention of agriculture, transportation infrastructure, international trade, food aid, agricultural research and development, poverty, conflict, and famine.