Food for Thought investigates the entire food system across continents.

When Kadir van Lohuizen discovered that his home country the Netherlands was the world's second-largest exporter of agricultural products after the United States, his interest was piqued. He wanted to discover the world behind our food production.
Where is our food produced? And how is it distributed across our world? Like a fly on the wall, Van Lohuizen follows the whole process, in the Netherlands, but also in Kenya, the USA, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and China. The large scale and efficiency of most food companies evokes as much respect as questions: what are the effects of these production and consumption chains on the planet? And how future-proof is this? Food for thought, indeed.

Food Production is responsible for at least 25% of global greenhouse emissions, putting increasing pressure on the world’s food supplies. Desertification, droughts, wildfires, floods and rising seas are leading to loss of land and decreased yields.
The climate crisis is not the sole disruptor of our food supply chain: the outbreak of Covid-19 showed that pandemics are very much related to what we eat and how we eat it and it has brought food uncertainty to the West’s doorstep, as much as the war in Ukraine and disruptions to the Suez Canal have more recently highlighted how global food distribution truly is.
The questions that van Lohuzien had in mind were simple: what are we doing to build more resilient and agile food systems that can adapt to a changing environment and respond to disruptions? Can we produce locally? Where will the next decade lead us? More mega-farms? Vertical farms in cities? Or even an animal free food production?

In this book - which can also be seen as a food atlas - Van Lohuizen compiles his images; extensive data research was also done, which was translated into unique infographics.
“We can feed this planet if we want to, even if there will soon be 11 billion of us, which is encouraging. But with a climate crisis in full swing, causing agricultural areas to dry up or be flooded, the system needs a major overhaul. I have become convinced that the way we’re doing things in many places won’t be sustainable in the longer or even the shorter term. The good news is that we can change it if we want to, and governments can also take the lead, particularly by providing farmers with alternative perspectives.”
— Kadir van Lohuizen