Search

The Anthropocene provides a useful way to think through all manner of human–environment processes and challenges. This is especially pronounced in relation to food and farming, which are heavily implicated in changes to the Earth's biophysical and chemical processes. Yet, despite burgeoning interest in the Anthropocene as a concept, it is comparatively absent from recent developments in food geography. This is surprising given the profound impacts of food and agriculture on biogeochemical flows and geographical strata, and given future predictions regarding 'Anthropogenic climate change.' The objective of this Theme Issue therefore, and the five papers that comprise it, is to redress this by directly connecting and drawing together social science scholarship that examines food geographies 'in,' 'of' and 'for' the Anthropocene. The Theme Issue papers engage with different aspects of the Anthropocene as spatial phenomena and here we integrate relevant arguments from each, alongside wider agri‐food geographical scholarship, to explain what we mean by food geographies 'in,' 'of' and 'for' the Anthropocene. In doing so, we respond to Tsing and colleagues' (2019, Current Anthropology 60, S186–97) call for a spatial as well as temporal treatment of the Anthropocene. These spatial expressions are also key to the proliferation of terms that have accompanied developments in Anthropocene scholarship. We conclude by offering up some brief reflections on a future research agenda. An important first step is to conceptualise food geographies 'in,' 'of' and 'for' the Anthropocene, including accounts that ground and potentially unsettle food and the Anthropocene as Capitalocene (Moore, 2016, Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism) and food and the Anthropocene as more‐than‐human (Haraway, 2016, Staying with the trouble: Making kin in the Chthulucen). A second step is to address key contemporary Anthropogenic agri‐food relations, especially those that are already in flux or transition. A final priority for future research is to deepen and extend the ethics of care and moral food geographies of the Anthropocene imperative. The objective of this Theme Issue, and the five papers that comprise it, is to connect and draw together social science scholarship that examines food geographies 'in,' 'of' and 'for' the Anthropocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changing patterns of human resource use and food consumption have profoundly impacted the Earth's biosphere. Until now, no individual taxa have been suggested as distinct and characteristic new morphospecies representing this change. Here we show that the domestic broiler chicken is one such potential marker. Human-directed changes in breeding, diet and farming practices demonstrate at least a doubling in body size from the late medieval period to the present in domesticated chickens, and an up to fivefold increase in body mass since the mid-twentieth century. Moreover, the skeletal morphology, pathology, bone geochemistry and genetics of modern broilers are demonstrably different to those of their ancestors. Physical and numerical changes to chickens in the second half of the twentieth century, i.e. during the putative Anthropocene Epoch, have been the most dramatic, with large increases in individual bird growth rate and population sizes. Broiler chickens, now unable to survive without human intervention, have a combined mass exceeding that of all other birds on Earth; this novel morphotype symbolizes the unprecedented human reconfiguration of the Earth's biosphere., Competing Interests: We have no competing interests.