Feeding the accelerator: A metabolic historical analysis of the US food regime
结合食物体制分析与代谢核算方法，利用1840-2017年数据集，量化美国“廉价食物”体制的长期可持续条件，揭示其通过剩余生成与重构维持的三个阶段，并指出廉价石油和新兴“廉价信息”在维持农业生产力中的关键作用。
This study combines food regime analysis with a metabolic accounting approach to reconstruct the long-run viability conditions of the US “cheap food” regime. We compile a harmonized dataset for 1840–2017 (census benchmark years) and apply Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) together with Impredicative Loop Analysis to quantify the co-evolution of agricultural output, labor time, and societal reproduction requirements. The results reveal a recurrent pattern of surplus generation and reconfiguration that supports a three-phase periodization: (i) accumulation by appropriation (1840–1890), (ii) accumulation by capitalization (1930–1970), and (iii) reorganization (1990s onward). Within the metabolic indicators used here, the 1930s stand out as the clearest systemic rupture, whereas later crises are associated with re-stabilization strategies that maintain surplus rates through technological change, state regulation, and evolving capitalization dynamics. The analysis also highlights the central role of commodity frontiers—most notably cheap oil—in sustaining postwar agro-industrial productivity, and it discusses the emergence of “cheap information” as a potential new frontier layered onto persistent petro-farming. By operationalizing food-regime narratives through a formal metabolic grammar, the study offers a reproducible way to interpret agrarian crises as expressions of contradictions between appropriation and capitalization, and to link regime stability to the biophysical and labor conditions of social reproduction.