Every revolution has its spark, and sometimes that spark is food. When the price of bread soared in 18th-century France, hunger fanned the flames that helped ignite the French Revolution. Centuries later, in the early 2010s, escalating food prices were among the catalysts of the Arab Spring. Famines, uprisings and political upheavals have long been tied to empty granaries, bread riots and food price shocks. History reminds us that food – or rather the lack of it – is not just about hunger but equally about power.On World Food Day, with the 2025 theme “Hand in Hand for Better Food and a Better Future”, we are reminded that hunger is not merely a humanitarian issue. It is political, structural and deeply entangled with conflict, inequality and climate From the French Revolution to the Arab Spring and now in Darfur and Gaza, food has stood at the centre of political struggles, sometimes as a catalyst for change and at other times as a tool of control.Consider the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Sudan, particularly in Darfur. Starvation there is not a natural tragedy but the direct outcome of war and deliberate obstruction of aid. Ongoing fighting has cut off supply routes, destroyed local food systems, and left millions facing acute hunger. Military forces have repeatedly employed scorched earth tactics: burning fields, destroying granaries and uprooting farming communities. Crops are torched before harvest, livestock are looted or slaughtered and villages are left barren. This calculated devastation ensures that even if violence temporarily subsides, communities have nothing to return to – no food, no seed, no livelihood. Hunger itself becomes a weapon of war, extending catastrophe long after the fighting is over. According to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), several areas in Sudan including Zamzam camp in North Darfur, camps in Abu Shouk and Al Salam, and the Western Nuba Mountains are already classified as Phase 5: “Famine/Humanitarian Catastrophe”, the highest level of food insecurity. This phase signifies widespread food deprivation, soaring malnutrition and excess mortality. It reflects not a looming threat, but an active, unfolding famine.In Palestine, food has long been entwined with occupation. Israeli military policies and settler expansion have not only dispossessed people of their land but also systematically targeted their ability to grow and access food. Agricultural lands have been bombed or confiscated, wells and irrigation networks destroyed, and orchards and greenhouses flattened. Farmers are often barred from their fields; fishing communities face restricted zones, confiscated boats and shrinking access to coastal waters.The IPC has likewise confirmed Phase 5 famine conditions in Gaza as of mid-2025. More than half a million people are facing catastrophic hunger, with the collapse of food consumption, acute child malnutrition and mortality rates that breach famine thresholds. These are not isolated incidents but part of a sustained campaign to sever communities from their land and livelihoods by turning hunger into a tool of control. The attack extends beyond fields and waters to culture, memory and identity. Olive groves that have stood for generations are uprooted. Traditional fishing livelihoods are curtailed. And culinary heritage is quietly targeted. Take za’atar, the wild herb central to Palestinian cuisine and identity. Since 1977, laws have criminalised the foraging of Origanum syriacum in parts of the region, imposing fines and confiscations that disproportionately affect Palestinian foragers. More recently, programs of za’atar domestication and breeding have displaced traditional communal foraging and cultivation practices, transforming what was once a shared, land-based relationship into a controlled and commercialised crop. Such measures erode rural livelihoods, fracture cultural memory and weaken claims to land. This is not simply hunger. It is the systematic dismantling of a people’s capacity to grow, gather, fish and feed themselves.The use of food as an instrument of power is not confined to war zones alone. Even in countries with overflowing granaries and record harvests, millions remain undernourished – a paradox of plenty. The problem is not the absence of food but its unequal distribution. Structural inequities, fractured supply chains, broken public distribution systems, speculative markets and profit-driven trade often stand between abundance and access, turning plenty itself into a cruel irony.Hunger, since the times of Malthus, has been framed as a problem of production versus population: grow more to feed more. But the world already produces enough to nourish its population. What stands in the way is power—who controls food, how it moves, and who gets to eat. These contradictions are sharpened by climate change, conflict, and trade systems that reward speculation and corporate consolidation over local resilience. Small farmers who produce much of the world’s food face displacement, debt, and marginalization. Millions go hungry not because they lack bread, but because they lack agency.Famines, too, have often been manufactured. The Bengal famine of 1943 was not the inevitable result of drought or crop failure. Food existed, but colonial policies, market failures, and wartime priorities turned scarcity into starvation. Millions died not because there wasn’t enough to eat, but because access was politically and economically denied.Today’s crises echo these dynamics in new forms. Starvation in Darfur, the assault on Palestine’s agriculture, and inequities in food-surplus economies are not separate stories. They are part of a single, global narrative about who controls food, and therefore, who holds power.Beneath every famine or food crisis lies a struggle over sovereignty: the ability of people and communities to grow, harvest, and share food on their own terms. When farmers are forced off their land, when fishing grounds are militarised, or when seeds and water are controlled by distant powers, people lose more than food – they lose autonomy. Hunger, then, is not just about empty plates; it is about who decides how those plates are filled.The theme of this year’s World Food Day calls for working “hand in hand”. But genuine collaboration cannot rest on unequal foundations. Ending hunger requires confronting the political and structural forces that sustain it. That means recognising that famine in Darfur and the blockade-induced starvation in Palestine are not humanitarian accidents but deliberate outcomes of war and occupation. It means acknowledging how the quiet erasure of za’atar foraging, combined with the destruction of farms, orchards and fisheries, undermines Palestinian sovereignty. And it means addressing the paradox of plenty to ensure that abundance translates into access.Global collaboration must begin with accountability. Governments, international institutions and civil society need to treat hunger as a matter of justice, not charity. This involves protecting local food systems, securing land rights, safeguarding culinary heritage, and ensuring that trade and aid policies do not deepen inequality. But it also requires listening to farmers, fisherfolk and foragers – the communities that have long sustained food systems from below.Hunger is not inevitable. It is a political choice made through war, policy, neglect and control. Just as bread shortages once set fire to revolutionary Paris and soaring food prices rattled regimes during the Arab Spring, today’s crises remind us that when people are denied food, stability itself begins to crumble. This World Food Day, as the world repeats slogans about working “hand in hand”, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: there can be no “better future” if food remains a weapon. A just food future begins when bread ceases to be an instrument of power and becomes what it should always have been – a shared right, not a privilege.Dr Taniya Sah is an assistant professor of economics at Vidyashilp University, Bengaluru. All views expressed are personal.