We’re heading out on the road again. This time, Spencer and I (that’s us up top) are going around the world to report on food. Not just what we eat, but why we eat it, and how it’s grown, prepared, and shipped. Food is, in many ways, the story of humanity and how our species came to dominate our planet. The narrative mixes history and economics and culture. With millions of tentacles in every area of the globe, food production is the biggest industry in the world—worth, according to World Bank estimates, about five trillion dollars each year.

Of course describing food with statistics can make it easy to forget that what we eat is also intensely personal. We craft our