Grain and Power

When shipping lanes close or harvests fail, it is not only traders and farmers who worry. Cabinets, central banks, and general staffs suddenly discover that food - so often relegated to humanitarian briefings - is a foundation of power. Grain and Power: Food Security as Grand Strategy shows how wheat, maize, rice, and the routes they travel shape who is secure, who is exposed, and who can exert pressure on whom. Moving from imperial granaries to twenty-first-century grain corridors, the book reveals food systems as critical infrastructure in an era of mounting geopolitical rivalry and climatic uncertainty.

Kwesi Ofori-Nyama traces how a small number of exporting states, ports, and trading firms came to dominate global flows of staple calories. He examines strategic reserves, export bans, sanctions exemptions, and the quiet politics of storage and disclosure. Along the way, readers encounter bread riots and regime collapse, contested ports and inland chokepoints, famines fought over in diplomatic backchannels, and migration routes carved by drought and price spikes. Rather than treating scarcity as an occasional emergency, the book presents food security strategy as an enduring field in which states, corporations, and communities manoeuvre.

Written for students of international relations, analysts of international political economy, and historically minded general readers, Grain and Power offers a framework for mapping national exposure and leverage. It helps readers see how supply dependence is produced, why some routes and actors matter disproportionately, and when harvest shocks spill into protest, conflict, or displacement. By the end, everyday bread, rice, and cooking oil appear not as background comforts but as elements in the long game of grand strategy - a game in which stability, justice, and power are all at stake.