Power & Protein | TableDebates

Alt text: Portrait of an angry looking cow. Photo by Matthis Volquardsen via Pexels

Journal articles

Public policies and vested interests preserve the animal farming status quo at the expense of animal product analogs

This article examines the dynamics of transition away from an animal product based food system and evaluates the potential for novel plant based products to supplant meat and dairy. The authors found that public funding for the novel products is smaller than that for animal products by factors of 1,200 in the EU and 800 in the US.

collage of historical adverts for protein foods

Primed for power: a short cultural history of protein. Section 1: The primary substance

Table of contents: Introduction Section 1: The primary substance Section 2: Meat makes meat: the first protein fashion Section 3: Testing the lower limit: the end of the first protein fashion Section 4: 1918-1955: milk, aid and biopolitics Section 5: Protein fiasco Section 6: Epilogue Suggested citation: Blaxter, T., & Garnett, T. (2022). Primed for power: a short cultural history of protein. TABLE, University of Oxford, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University and Research. https://doi.org/10.56661/ba271ef5

collage of historical adverts for protein foods

Primed for power: a short cultural history of protein. Introduction

Table of contents: Introduction Section 1: The primary substance Section 2: Meat makes meat: the first protein fashion Section 3: Testing the lower limit: the end of the first protein fashion Section 4: 1918-1955: milk, aid and biopolitics Section 5: Protein fiasco Section 6: Epilogue Suggested citation: Blaxter, T., & Garnett, T. (2022). Primed for power: a short cultural history of protein. TABLE, University of Oxford, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University and Research. https://doi.org/10.56661/ba271ef5

Blog post Government, stay away from our meatball: How populism stops us from eating less meat

Government, stay away from our meatball: How populism stops us from eating less meat

About the author: Yolie Michielsen is a PhD candidate at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands. She has a background in cultural anthropology (BSc), consumption sociology (MSc), and philosophy of culture (MA). Her PhD focuses on resistance in the societal transition towards reduced meat consumption. The first part of the thesis, written with co-promotor Dr. Hilje van der Horst (sociologist and human geographer), studies backlash against meat curtailment policies in online discourse.

Sapling in moss

Series 3: How will UK rewilding affect global biodiversity?

Rewilding, with its promise to bring back some wildness to landscapes, is attracting both excitement and controversy in the UK. But could rewilding in the UK simply cause more damage to biodiversity elsewhere?

where does protein get its power?

Where does protein get its power?

In this blog post, Tamsin Blaxter and Tara Garnett explore the different ways that protein has acquired cultural associations and connotations over the last one and a half centuries. This draws on our longer report Primed for power, and readers should refer to the full report for more depth on many of the stories mentioned here.

Jeremy Brice

Podcast episode

Ep33: Jeremy Brice on "Investment, Power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa"

Who is investing in protein in sub-Saharan Africa and what motivates their decision to - or to not - invest in the region?

Image: Farmer Elias Chirinda drying his jugo bean (Bambara groundnut) crop in Chimanimani, TSURO, Zimbabwe. Credit: Xavier Vahed for Seed and Knowledge Initiative (SKI). SKI has granted authorisation to use the image in this article.

Essay: How power dynamics influence southern African seed and food systems

Access to seed is a vital factor in crop production, affecting which crops are grown and hence what food is available. This essay explores the power dynamics influencing three different seed provision systems in southern Africa, with a focus on Zimbabwe: formal seed systems involving commercial seed dealers and seed aid programmes; informal seed systems based on local markets, social networks and individual farmers saving seeds; and an intermediate system where seed is produced by community organisations. The author is Dr Bulisani L Ncube, senior programme officer at the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, whose PhD thesis analysed the relationship between seed security and food security. He explains how different stakeholders perceive each of the seed provision systems and their benefits and drawbacks for reliability, traceability, income, knowledge transfer and more.

Investment power and protein report cover image - herding cattle

Investment, Power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa

This report examines financial investment in protein production in sub-Saharan Africa. It argues that in order to understand the changing place of protein in sub-Saharan African diets and food systems, it is important to investigate what motivates different financial actors to invest in new food products, markets and value chains – or to withhold investment from them. To this end, it examines what role investors’ expectations about the future of protein in sub-Saharan Africa play in mobilising investment in some places, protein sources and value chains – and in deterring investment in others. It thus examines what role the power to produce authoritative visions for the future of food, and to convince investors to act upon them, might play in transforming the organisation of protein production, provisioning and consumption within the region. https://www.doi.org/10.56661/d8817170 Suggested citation: Brice, J., (2022) Investment, Power and Protein in sub-Saharan Africa. TABLE Reports. TABLE, University of Oxford, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and Wageningen University and Research. doi.org/10.56661/d8817170