Feed the Planet

Presented in partnership with Arts + Literature Laboratory, the Wisconsin Science Festival, and FlakPhoto Projects.

In Feed the Planet: A Photographic Journey to the World’s Food, acclaimed photographer George Steinmetz documents the global effort that puts food on our tables and transforms the surface of the Earth. Do you know where your food comes from? To find out, Steinmetz spent a decade documenting food production across thirty-six countries on six continents, twenty-seven US states, and five oceans.

In striking aerial images, Steinmetz captures the massive scale of twenty-first-century agriculture that has sculpted 40 percent of the Earth’s surface and depleted the fish in its seas. He takes us to places that most of us never see, although our very lives depend on them. From Kansas wheat fields to a shrimp cocktail’s origins in India to cattle stations in Australia larger than some countries, Steinmetz tracks the foods we eat back to land and sea, field and factory. He explores the farming of staples like wheat and rice, the cultivation of vegetables and fruits, fishing and aquaculture, and meat production, he surveys artisanal farming in diverse cultures, and he penetrates vast agribusinesses that fuel international trade.

In conversation with Michael King.