Supermarket USA : Food and Power in the Cold War Farms Race

This innovative history of supermarkets describes the role of food and agriculture during and after the Cold War. American business leaders and political figures deployed American supermarkets around the world as explicitly anticommunist "weapons" in the Cold War economic contest with the Soviet Union. Modern supermarkets, built upon industrial agriculture supply chains, penetrated world political and economic spheres during the Cold War Farms Race, embodying a pervasive rhetoric of exceptional American food abundance, a counterrevolutionary ideology of capitalist economic development, and a moral claim to the justifiability of U.S. economic power on the world stage. The farmers who produced the food for supermarket supply chains were enlisted in the Farms Race in ways that shaped how agricultural development schemes proceeded in the latter half of the twentieth century. Ultimately, notions of U.S. food power were reconfigured into global systems of market power coordinated by multinational agribusiness corporations. The stage was set for our present moment, in which transnational supermarkets operate as powerful institutions of nonstate governance in the global food economy. America fought the Cold War in part through supermarkets—and the food economy pioneered then has helped shape the way we eat today

Supermarkets were invented in the United States, and from the 1940s on they made their way around the world, often explicitly to carry American†‘style economic culture with them. This innovative history tells us how supermarkets were used as anticommunist weapons during the Cold War, and how that has shaped our current food system.

The widespread appeal of supermarkets as weapons of free enterprise contributed to a “farms race” between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the superpowers vied to show that their contrasting approaches to food production and distribution were best suited to an abundant future. In the aftermath of the Cold War, U.S. food power was transformed into a global system of market power, laying the groundwork for the emergence of our contemporary world, in which transnational supermarkets operate as powerful institutions in a global food economy. America fought the Cold War in part through supermarkets--and the food economy pioneered then has helped shape the way we eat today Supermarkets were invented in the United States, and from the 1940s on they made their way around the world, often explicitly to carry American style economic culture with them. This innovative history tells us how supermarkets were used as anticommunist weapons during the Cold War, and how that has shaped our current food system. The widespread appeal of supermarkets as weapons of free enterprise contributed to a "farms race" between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the superpowers vied to show that their contrasting approaches to food production and distribution were best suited to an abundant future. In the aftermath of the Cold War, U.S. food power was transformed into a global system of market power, laying the groundwork for the emergence of our contemporary world, in which transnational supermarkets operate as powerful institutions in a global food economy This cultural history examines the global rise of American-style supermarkets during the Cold War era and how they shaped the way we eat today. Supermarkets were invented in the United States, and from the 1940s on they made their way around the world, often explicitly to carry American-style economic culture with them. This innovative history tells us how supermarkets were used as anticommunist weapons during the Cold War, and how their proliferation has shaped our current food system. The widespread appeal of supermarkets contributed to a "farms race" between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the superpowers vied to show that their contrasting approaches to food production and distribution were best suited to an abundant future. In the aftermath of the Cold War, US food power was transformed into a global system of market power, laying the groundwork for the emergence of our contemporary world, in which transnational supermarkets operate as powerful institutions in a global food economy. "Supermarkets were invented in the United States, and from the 1940s on they made their way around the world, often explicitly to carry American-style economic culture with them. This innovative history tells us how supermarkets were used as anticommunist weapons during the Cold War, and how that has shaped our current food system. The widespread appeal of supermarkets as weapons of free enterprise contributed to a 'farms race' between the United States and the Soviet Union, as the superpowers vied to show that their contrasting approaches to food production and distribution were best suited to an abundant future. In the aftermath of the Cold War, U.S. food power was transformed into a global system of market power, laying the groundwork for the emergence of our contemporary world, in which transnational supermarkets operate as powerful institutions in a global food economy"--Dust jacket flaps Contents 7 Acknowledgments 9 Introduction 11 1. Machines for Selling 16 2. The Farms Race Begins 53 3. Supermercado USA 80 4. Socialist Supermarkets and “Peaceful Competition” 107 5. Food Chains and Free Enterprise 153 6. Food Power and the Global Supermarket 188 Epilogue 220 Notes 229 Index 277