The Evil Genius of the Global Food System

There’s nothing in the world more important than the food system. The twentieth century was scarred by enormous famines – and, like the one in Gaza, they are still deliberately engineered. But since the 1970s, the absolute number of deaths from famine have dropped by over 90%.

On a global scale, we now make so much food that farmers will sometimes destroy it just to keep the prices high.

How is there so much food? And, amid all these calories, how are so many people still malnourished? Why is it suddenly all so expensive? And is it all about to come crashing down?

Charles C. Mann tells Richard Hames about the historical power of bird shit, the strange reason Indian scientists put wheat in a nuclear reactor, and how the genius who made modern farming possible also invented the gas that was used to murder millions in the Holocaust.