{"href":"http://player.captivate.fm/services/oembed?url=http%3A%2F%2Fplayer.captivate.fm%2Fepisode%2Fb5515d11-4054-4fa1-a424-cf61a8ddc565","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Captivate.FM","provider_url":"https://www.captivate.fm","width":600,"height":200,"type":"rich","html":"","title":"Food politics","description":" Dr. John Bohstedt connects the dots in his discussion of\u00a0Food politics: what everyone needs to know\u00a0by Robert Paarlberg. His passionate interest in the politics of hunger is both historical and modern. As a University of Tennessee history professor, his research revealed hundreds of food riots during the Industrial Revolution. Today\u2019s struggles over food are again making headlines. \u201cAs they did 250 years ago, the social drama of riots brings on stage political forces, conflicts and actors we may not have recognized,\u201d he says. Dr. Bohstedt thinks most Americans are probably unaware of the offstage dramas of food politics, dramas that are brought to light in the book Food politics. \u201cPaarlberg shows us how politics shapes our food chain\u2014from abundance to obesity to E. coli to organic foods to farm bills to Freedom fries. Paarlberg raises important questions such as, how do our farmers\u2014and the \u2018American food regime\u2019\u2014and ethanol\u2014and our menus\u2014affect hungry Asians and Africans? Is \u2018food aid\u2019 a blessing or a curse? Why doesn\u2019t \u2018free-trade\u2019 doctrine cover food? What about those \u2018Frankenfoods?\u2019 What might sustainable farming look like? Are we approaching the abyss of chronic food crisis or the sunny fields of the green revolution? Food is such a basic driver of human affairs,\u201d says Bohstedt. \u201cAs I studied food riots in early modern England, I found that customary episodes of crowd violence were a form of bargaining between the common people and their rulers, indeed a first draft of the welfare state. Like \u2018our\u2019 recent food riots of 2008, they were politics from the gut where hunger meets outrage.\u201d (Recorded\u00a0April 16, 2014)","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/f07864e3-eb10-477b-bd12-28d81e9fd2e2/mt3pksmHk87V0ERqQ4bOQHhI.png"}