★The author is an agricultural engineer deeply rooted in environmental engineering, with practical experience across multiple countries and university teaching background. He has published 2 popular science books on environmental topics, and his professional expertise provides solid support for the content.
★Focusing on the global challenge of “feeding 10 billion people,” it deciphers the application of technologies such as GPS sensors, vertical farms, and CRISPR in food production, directly addressing food security issues amid climate and resource pressures.
★From the hunger crisis in the Pharaonic era to modern food technologies, it connects history, technology, and geopolitics, explaining the complex logic behind food in accessible language that balances scientific rigor and readability.

Behind every bite of food lies more than just agriculture, animal husbandry, fishing, or trade… there are thousands of years of human ingenuity, amazing technologies, and geopolitical balances that determine what ends up on our plates.

Five thousand years ago, the stele of Pharaoh Djoser depicted children weeping and elderly people huddled with hunger. In ancient Rome, a farmer could barely produce 1 ton of wheat per year. Today, that figure has multiplied by over a thousand; yet we face an unprecedented challenge—feeding more than 10 billion people on a planet under pressure from climate change, water scarcity, and biodiversity loss.

Every dish hides centuries of ingenuity, invisible technologies, and geopolitical balances. A simple fried egg encapsulates human civilization: animal husbandry, the use of fire, metallurgy, and the salt trade. We produce 11 billion tons of food annually—3.7 kilograms per person per day—and yet 30% of fruits are lost in logistics, and 1 out of every 4 trucks in Europe travels empty.

China holds enough grain reserves to feed its population for nearly a year and has acquired land in Africa equivalent to the size of Ireland; our cows are equipped with GPS sensors; vertical farms have increased productivity by 20 times; saffron sells for thousands of euros per kilogram… and now laboratories are producing it without the need for traditional cultivation. This book unpacks this global landscape: CRISPR gene-editing technology, drones patrolling farmlands, the nitrogen fertilizer industry, ghost kitchens in the food delivery sector, the Loess Plateau restored by the Asian giant, and lab-grown proteins.

From the canned food invented by Appert for Napoleon to today’s bioreactors, the history of food is the history of civilization. What we will put on our plates tomorrow is already determined today at the intersection of history, technology, and power.

Jesús M. Paniagua (born in Soria, Spain, 1965) is an agricultural engineer who has dedicated his professional life to environmental engineering, focusing on the planning, design, and construction of facilities that enable environmental management. His experience is particularly concentrated in the fields of waste treatment plants and water engineering. He has also served as a lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, the Public University of Navarre, and several master’s programs on environmental topics.

His career has taken him to Spain and countries such as Brazil, the United Kingdom, Morocco, Romania, and China, and these experiences have been condensed into this book, which is primarily popular science and concise. As a science communicator, he participates in radio programs, courses, and conferences, and has published Waste (Guadalmazán, 2022) and Water (Guadalmazán, 2024), exploring global waste and water resource management issues.