Feeding the accelerator: A metabolic historical analysis of the US food regime

This study combines food regime analysis with a metabolic accounting approach to reconstruct the long-run viability conditions of the US “cheap food” regime. We compile a harmonized dataset for 1840–2017 (census benchmark years) and apply Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) together with Impredicative Loop Analysis to quantify the co-evolution of agricultural output, labor time, and societal reproduction requirements. The results reveal a recurrent pattern of surplus generation and reconfiguration that supports a three-phase periodization: (i) accumulation by appropriation (1840–1890), (ii) accumulation by capitalization (1930–1970), and (iii) reorganization (1990s onward). Within the metabolic indicators used here, the 1930s stand out as the clearest systemic rupture, whereas later crises are associated with re-stabilization strategies that maintain surplus rates through technological change, state regulation, and evolving capitalization dynamics. The analysis also highlights the central role of commodity frontiers—most notably cheap oil—in sustaining postwar agro-industrial productivity, and it discusses the emergence of “cheap information” as a potential new frontier layered onto persistent petro-farming. By operationalizing food-regime narratives through a formal metabolic grammar, the study offers a reproducible way to interpret agrarian crises as expressions of contradictions between appropriation and capitalization, and to link regime stability to the biophysical and labor conditions of social reproduction.