This chapter focuses on the multiple facets and meanings of water and how it is a contested resource. It also explores linkages between SDG 6 (Clean water and sanitation) and SDG 2 (Zero hunger).

The European Union (EU)’s food system is under pressure for reform.

Better policies offer significant potential to meet the challenges facing food systems, but policy reform has often proved difficult.

While the need for policy reforms to generate more equitable, healthier, and sustainable food systems increasingly is acknowledged by policymakers and the public, the political economy dynamics to achieve this will remain sizeable in the years to

In August 2022, the Razoni cargo ship, laden with 26,000 tons of grain, navigated a narrow corridor of mined waters outside Ukraine’s port of Odessa.

The world’s agrifood systems have served society well since 1798 when Malthus anonymously published An Essay on the Principle of Population.

In both developed and developing countries, agricultural support policies provide enormous transfers of resources to agriculture—about US$817 billion per year worldwide in the 2019–2021 period (OECD 2022).¹ Some agricultural support policies, such

Coalitions—or a set of individuals and groups with shared policy preferences—lie at the heart of political economy.¹ They are also often considered central to policy change.

This chapter examines four important food production innovations that have been favored by scientists but opposed by influential swathes of the public: Green Revolution farming, industrial agriculture, the use of synthetic chemicals versus organic

Today’s food production and consumption has large consequences for the environment and human health.

Central to understanding the political economy of food systems transformation is clarifying the systems that enable—or prevent—monitoring progress on transformation, setting evidence-based commitments for improvement, and ensuring accountability f

This chapter focuses on African cities and problematizes emerging food system and urban system trends and actions in these cities. The focus on Africa is deliberate.

The Group of Seven wealthy nations (G7), currently led by the German presidency, has put a welcome focus on the global food insecurity and nutrition crisis unleashed by the war in Ukraine, with the most severe impacts falling on vulnerable populat

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is likely to have serious consequences for global food security.

As discussed in an earlier post, fertilizer prices have increased drastically, up 230% between May 2020 and May 2022.

The World Trade Organization’s 12th Ministerial Conference (WTO MC12) takes place June 12–15, 2022, in Geneva — two years after the pandemic forced members to postpone the meeting’s original schedule.

Development agencies are pouring in billions of dollars to address the global food crisis exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Frequent food crises with spiking prices have become the new normal in the 21st century, bringing urgency to the task of understanding their nutritional impacts on poor and food insecure populations.

Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine has inflicted devastating impacts that continue to mount more than a year after the invasion.

The war in Ukraine has pushed prices of agricultural products to historically high levels, and concerns about global food security occupy headlines and world leaders’ minds, as demonstrated by recent International Monetary Fund and World Bank meet