Not Now, But Soon: The Food System is Rigged

Our miniseries Not Now, But Soon challenges the stories we often tell about disasters and explores how we can use speculative fiction to create better futures and policies. 

On this episode, host Malka Older explores food systems with investigative journalist Thin Lei Win. Win shares her experience growing up in Myanmar, and how that has shaped how she sees the intersection between food production, climate, and disasters. 
This podcast is part of the Future Tense Fiction project, a speculative fiction series that uses imagination to explore how science and technology will shape our future. Read the short stories from the series published by Issues in Science and Technology. 

Resources

Follow Win’s weekly newsletter, Thin Ink, to learn more about food, climate and where they meet. Get started with her newsletter with these articles: 

• “Moonstruck”: a critique of the focus of the food system’s focus on technology and productivity to solve food insecurity, at the expense of equity. 

• “A System Under Strain”: a roundup of recent reports on food systems. 

Win coordinated The New Humanitarian’s series on emerging hunger hotspots as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

Find more of Win’s food system investigations at Lighthouse Reports. 

• “The Hunger Profiteers”: how financial speculation could be fueling hunger. 

• “Farmers Protest, Who Gains?”: Who is leading the farmers’ protest in Europe and are they truly representative of farmers? 

Visit Kite Tales to read stories from Myanmar’s people in their own words.