ABSTRACT
The First World War transformed many aspects of global commerce, but no trade transformed exactly like the global trade in food. Western European countries had run food deficits for decades as the transatlantic trade grew in the late Victorian period. As a commodity that none of the belligerents could live without, food supplies gained a new strategic importance during the war.1 As the war progressed, food for Britain, France, and Italy continued to pour in from across the Atlantic, much of it from the United States and Canada, but with significant amounts from Argentina.
