"The enemy of my enemy is my friend."

How does one get a pineapple in Nova Scotia?

“What starts as curiosity about where the food in our supermarket comes from unfolds into many important questions about the dependencies countries have on others: who is vulnerable when food crises hit, who is exposed to export tariffs, and what other countries might be there to fill the gaps?”

It’s difficult to wrap our heads around the modern miracle of excess food. And where does it all go?

It feels like a miracle until you notice the infrastructure built around it. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was this. The pipelines, the infrastructure, and how they interact with economies make us all dependent on each other. It’s taken at least a century of work to put this together.

Take a look at “How does food get traded around the world?” from Our World in Data.

On one hand, you can look at these charts and see how the lines are divided. On the other, you can look past the lines of rival tribes and see a shared enemy: scarcity. Perhaps, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”