Episode Details

This episode is a supplementary full interview with Dr Crystal Bennes from Episode 5 of the Edible Empire podcast series. Here, we explore the social impacts of phosphate extraction from Western Sahara, illegally occupied by Morocco, and its place in the wider machinery of food imperialism.

Phosphate, mined from occupied Western Sahara, makes its way into the farming production systems of a number of major industrialised nations, including dairy farming in New Zealand. This episode traces how global agriculture reshapes distant economies through trade in phosphate fertiliser from the illegally occupied territories in West Africa. Through the story of “white gold”, we uncover how even the purest landscapes are bound into the machinery of food imperialism.

We discuss the environmentally destructive and geopolitically fraught supply chains connecting industrialised agrifood production, like the intensive dairy production in New Zealand, with phosphate mining in the illegally occupied territory of Western Sahara. Researcher and artist Dr Crystal Bennes traces the physical journey of this phosphate rock, revealing how Western agricultural high yields rely heavily on wealth extracted under colonial conditions from the Boo Cra mine, highlighting the profound human and environmental costs borne by displaced Sahrawi populations.

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