Food and Nutrition in Wartime in the Modern World

The legitimacy of modern states has often been highly reliant on securing stable and consistent access to food for their populations; interruptions to the supply of and allocation of food has been a significant source of political and social instability. War has been – and continues to be – a major disruptor of access to food and nutrition.

Securing food resources has been a major logistical preoccupation of commanders, who needed to ensure that their armies were fed, which could divert food away from civilian populations. As armies moved, civilian food stocks could be looted or destroyed, and formerly productive agricultural lands might become battlefields. Regional and international trade in food was disrupted by the mobilisation of shipping for military use and blockades. Humanitarian legal regimes and laws of war have further obliged states to feed occupied populations, prisoners of war, and civilian internees. States have also used the turbulence of war to conceal the deliberate starvation of marginalised or captive populations as part of policies of punishment, displacement, and genocide. The growing scientific understanding of nutrition and nutritional value of different foods has complicated each of these areas in turn.

The disruptions of war upon the supply and circulation of food have yielded a range of international political, legal and civilian responses, from rationing, public feeding initiatives, scientific innovation, humanitarian interventions and food riots. Modern warfare has resulted in preoccupation not just with the social and cultural aspects of food essential to morale, but with developing technocratic and scientifically-informed approaches to nutrition as well. Wartime food shortages and the greater understanding of the nutritional value of foodstuffs have been used as levers by states and non-state actors to enforce social control among populations by requiring conditions to be met before the provisioning of food.

With an internationally reknowned group of scholars presenting, this conference will enable them to workshop and present their ideas, with the ultimate goal of producing a volume of essays on the theme of food and nutrition in times of war in the modern world.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Chloë Pieters, Rebekah Hodge, Christopher Batten