Freakonomics Radio

How the Supermarket Helped America Win the Cold War

Aisle upon aisle of fresh produce, cheap meat, and sugary cereal — a delicious embodiment of free-market capitalism, right? Not quite. The supermarket was in fact the end point of the U.S. government’s battle for agricultural abundance against the USSR. Our farm policies were built to dominate, not necessarily to nourish — and we are still living with the consequences.

People picking up treats at a self-serve delicatessen in Berg's Supermarket, circa 1950. Credit: Gifford Photographic Collection via OSU Special Collections & Archives/flickr

The decades-long Cold War between the United States and the USSR featured a space race, an arms race, and… a farms race. This farms race — which involved substantial government policies to deliver high-volume and standardized agriculture — was about more than just food; it was a battle over which was the superior system, communism or capitalism.

The farms race had an obvious winner: American supermarkets were filled with affordable food, while the USSR was ultimately forced to import grain from the United States.

But the American victory was, to some degree, a Pyrrhic victory whose aftereffects are still being felt. Today on Freakonomics…