From the emergence of exchange relations to the globalization of our time, food is both an object and an indicator of the trends and power dynamics that shaped human history. Today, the health crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic since 2019, as well as the war in Ukraine since February 2022, have raised serious concerns about the stability of the dominant agrifood model and the adequacy of basic food supplies globally.

We are now realizing that almost unlimited access to food is not an inviolable reality, and that agricultural products and food play a crucial role on the international stage, as well as in the stability of nations. As food is stripped of its recreational guise in affluent societies, its geopolitical essence is increasingly revealed.

The book by Pierre Raffard highlights the political, economic, social, and cultural challenges presented in the fields or vineyards, throughout the processing and distribution chains, on supermarket shelves, but also on our plates and around them. Food as a means of survival but also as a tool of soft or hard power, the challenges posed to food production by climate change, the global dominance of certain food companies, the role of food technology, the internet, and marketing strategies that aim to predict and control our most personal choices, along with movements for more sustainable food production and consumption, are facets of a complex reality and show that our plates are a privileged space for understanding the world and reflecting on the evolution of human societies in the future.