The Rhetoric of Hunger and Plenty: Agro-Food Policy in Belgium, 1918-1958

Remarkably, agro-food policies in Europe have been studied intensely for the 19th century, when recurrent famines were overcome, and again for the years from the 1950s on, when the EECs agricultural policy took shape. However, the complex 'interim', roughly the interwar period and the first post-WWII decade, has often been overlooked. This project aims at unraveling the agro-food policy of Belgium during these years: i.e. of a densely populated and industrialized country, with a declining farming population, and very vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the international food market.