Edible Empire

This is the epilogue of a six-part series on food imperialism. Welcome to Edible Empire, a podcast by Planet Pulse Pacific about the hidden cost of our food.
This episode explores the systemic hidden costs of the global food system by reflecting on the core themes of the Edible Empire series, examining how modern corporate power and historical food imperialism drive global resource extraction and labour exploitation. Hosts Ben, Neal, and Emma look back across the series to dismantle the complex mechanisms that keep consumers blind to the true human and environmental price of the food on their plates.
Welcome to the epilogue episode of our podcast series. As we bring this journey to a close, we return to the questions that started it all: what are the true costs of our food, and who pays them? Can we imagine a fairer world where the food on our plates doesn’t cost the Earth?
This podcast series has traced the hidden links of food imperialism from New Zealand dairy backed by Western Saharan "blood phosphate" to West African palm oil on modern supermarket shelves. Today's food empire is driven by corporate power and annual reports rather than national flags, relying on a playbook of resource extraction and labour exploitation. A few massive multinational corporations dominate the global supply chain, creating an "hourglass squeeze" that exploits both producers and consumers whilst masking the true ecological and human costs of cheap, intensively produced food.
A fairer future demands that we challenge these corporate middlemen and rebuild transparency through concepts like food sovereignty, degrowth, and stronger protections for small-scale farmers and workers. This journey requires reclaiming our relationship with food, moving away from a system that treats the consumer as just another commodity. As several of our wonderful guests noted, our current food system was constructed by humans, meaning that we can be the ones who change it!
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Resources from this episode:
https://www.thesalmonandthetomato.org 
To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

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This is episode 6 of a six-part series on food imperialism. Welcome to Edible Empire, a podcast by Planet Pulse Pacific about the hidden cost of our food.
Food isn’t just taste—it’s power. This podcast explores how empires and corporations built control through agriculture, reshaping cultures and feeding some at the expense of others.
This episode explores visions for a fairer food system that support producers, ensure diverse food choices, and challenge the intensive nature of current supply chains.
Having heard about the deep history of extraction and exploitation inherent in globalised food supply chains, what does a fair food system look like? How could we ensure sufficient, diverse food choices for all whilst supporting those who produce it? This episode dives into proposed futures that challenge the intensive nature of traditional agrifood systems and the supply chains that deliver it, eventually, to our homes.
Our final episode shifts focus toward practical frameworks, hopeful visions, and grassroots models for establishing a more equitable, localised, and sustainable global food system. Here, the discussion moves from macro-level economic theory to community-led action.
Degrowth scholar Professor Anitra Nelson details how dismantling profit-driven corporate commodity markets can create needs-based local economies that respect ecological boundaries.
Dr Million Belay, General Coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, explains how reclaiming community control over seeds, land, and traditional knowledge allows populations to resist corporate dependency and build resilient agricultural systems.
Turning to localised solutions within the United Kingdom, Shrewsbury Food Hub co-founder Ali Thomas demonstrates the power of volunteer-led redistribution networks that intercept supermarket surplus to foster social solidarity and tackle the systemic absurdity of food waste.
Finally, author and smallholder Chris Smaje makes a compelling case for a decentralised network of diverse smallholdings, arguing that a return to small-scale agroecological farming is a modern necessity capable of restoring degraded landscapes, revitalising rural economies, and breaking the entrenched grip of transnational agribusiness.
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Resources from this episode:
https://anitranelson.info/food-for-degrowth/ 
https://www.routledge.com/Food-for-Degrowth-Perspectives-and-Practices/Nelson-Edwards/p/book/9780367436469
https://ipes-food.org/people/million-belay/
https://afsafrica.org/meet-the-team/
https://www.agroecologyconference.eoai-africa.org/Dr_million.html
https://afsafrica.org/14083/
https://www.shrewsburyfoodhub.org.uk/
https://chrissmaje.com 
To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

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Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.

This is episode 5 of a six-part series on food imperialism. Welcome to Edible Empire, a podcast by Planet Pulse Pacific about the hidden cost of our food.
Beyond recipes lies a story of power. From colonial plantations to modern agribusiness, this podcast reveals how the pursuit of food has redrawn maps, exploited people, and still shapes who holds control today.
This episode explores how New Zealand’s dairy industry links local landscapes to global extraction, ecological harm, and the wider machinery of food imperialism.
New Zealand’s image of clean, green pastures hides one of the world’s most intensive dairy industries. Behind each glass of milk there is a hidden web of global extraction: phosphate mined from occupied Western Sahara, palm kernel imported from deforested Southeast Asia, and polluted rivers flowing through Māori ancestral lands. This episode traces how New Zealand’s dairy boom reshapes both local ecosystems and distant economies, from illegally occupied territories in West Africa to political power in New Zealand. Through the story of “white gold”, we uncover how even the purest landscapes are bound into the machinery of food imperialism.
Here, we discuss the environmentally destructive and geopolitically fraught supply chains connecting intensive dairy production in Aotearoa New Zealand with phosphate mining in the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara. Our three expert guests detail how New Zealand’s export-driven commodity model creates intense global market pressures for corporate profit and high-yield volume. 
Freshwater ecologist Dr Mike Joy exposes the catastrophic local consequences of this system, explaining how excessive synthetic nitrogen and fertiliser inputs poison rivers, disrupt aquatic ecosystems, and contaminate drinking water. 
Geographer Dr Milena Bojovic unpacks the structural traps forcing farmers into continual intensification, which in turn fuels a dependency on rare, internationally contested mineral resources.
Finally, researcher and artist Dr Crystall Bennes traces the physical journey of this phosphate rock, revealing how Western agricultural high yields rely heavily on wealth extracted under colonial conditions from the Boo Cra mine, highlighting the profound human and environmental costs borne by displaced Sahrawi populations.
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Resources from this episode:
https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/pq/article/view/9629/8507
https://people.wgtn.ac.nz/mike.joy 
https://www.gofundme.com/f/almasar-library-education-centre-for-children-and-women 
https://wsrw.org/en 
https://www.crystalbennes.com/ 
To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

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Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.

This is episode 4 of a six-part series on food imperialism. Welcome to Edible Empire, a podcast by Planet Pulse Pacific about the hidden cost of our food.
We celebrate flavours, but rarely the people behind them. This podcast uncovers how food—once shaped by empire and now by corporate power—has long been used to control land, labour, and cultures.
This episode explores the hidden links between salmon farming in northern Europe and tomato production in southern Spain, revealing the human and environmental costs behind cheap, year-round food.
What connects salmon farming in northern Europe with tomato farming in southern Spain? These two, seemingly distinct food supply chains ensure that our supermarket shelves are stocked with cheap, year-round food. What we don’t see, however, are the hidden links - the overfishing along the coast of West Africa that destroys local communities’ livelihoods and drives migration to Europe; the dangerous journeys by small boat where 1 in 5 people die; the entrapment of migrants arriving in exploitative agricultural labour in Spain’s intensive greenhouses. This episode examines the story of salmon farming and tomato greenhouses - and highlights the hidden costs of commodified food.
This episode uncovers the destructive and interconnected global supply chains linking northern European salmon aquaculture to southern Spanish greenhouse agriculture. Through interviews with four expert guests, the episode traces how the booming Norwegian salmon farming industry relies heavily on wild-caught ocean feed extracted from West Africa.
Investigative journalists Simen Sætre, Hazel Healy, and Brigitte Wear expose the ecological crises, corporate opacity, and false sustainability narratives surrounding aquaculture, whilst Dr Aliou Ba of Greenpeace Africa details how this industrial plundering has collapsed local artisanal fisheries and triggered a profound food security crisis in Senegal. This environmental degradation ultimately forces thousands of displaced West Africans to undertake a perilous sea voyage to Spain, where researcher María Alonso Martínez reveals they are heavily exploited as undocumented migrant labourers, working under inhumane conditions within Almería’s vast "Sea of Plastic" to harvest the cheap winter vegetables that stock European supermarket shelves.
Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss out on the next episode!
Resources from this episode:
https://norla.no/en/books/1286-the-new-fish-the-global-history-of-salmon-farming
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/735421/the-new-fish-by-simen-saetre-and-kjetil-ostli/
To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.

This is episode 3 of a six-part series on food imperialism. Welcome to Edible Empire, a podcast by Planet Pulse Pacific about the hidden cost of our food.
Food isn’t just about taste—it’s power. This podcast explores how empires and corporations built control through agriculture, reshaping cultures and feeding some at the expense of others.
This episode traces the global impact of the palm oil industry from its indigenous roots to modern supply chains through three expert interviews.
Dr Jonathan Robins opens by detailing the pre-colonial history of oil palm in West Africa and explaining how European empires weaponised the crop to fuel the Industrial Revolution, establishing structural patterns that mirror today’s agribusiness models.
Dr Helena Varkkey then unpacks the political economy of Malaysian production, exposing how entrenched relationships between political elites and conglomerates shield the industry from regulation.
Farwiza Farhan brings a frontline conservation perspective from Indonesia, documenting how government-incentivised monoculture plantations drive deforestation, threaten endangered species, and violate Indigenous land rights. 
Together, the experts critique the effectiveness of voluntary sustainability certification schemes like the RSPO, debate whether palm oil can ever be truly sustainable at scale, and highlight the efforts of local communities fighting back against corporate food imperialism.
Make sure you subscribe so you don’t miss out on the next episode!
Resources from this episode:
https://www.mtu.edu/social-sciences/department/faculty/robins/
https://commoditiesofempire.org.uk/about/jonathan-robins/
https://theconversation.com/profiles/jonathan-e-robins-1227071
https://seapeat.wixsite.com/home
https://cgsea.org/
https://umexpert.um.edu.my/helenav 
To view all the links to the websites and documents, visit the show notes on our website.

Please support our work and enable us to deliver more content by buying us a coffee or becoming a member of Athletes for Nature.
Follow us on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to this podcast, and share this episode with your friends and family.