This ready-to-teach 90-minute history lesson explores the powerful and sobering question:

How can governments use food systems to control people?

Designed as part of a wider Food Systems theme, this lesson approaches the topic from a historical perspective by examining Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Students investigate how food production, grain collection, collectivisation, propaganda, fear and state control contributed to devastating famine.

Students explore two major case studies:

Stalin’s Soviet Union — collectivisation, grain requisitioning, the attack on “kulaks”, Ukraine and the Holodomor, secrecy and propaganda.
Mao’s China — the Great Leap Forward, people’s communes, unrealistic targets, false reporting, grain procurement, communal kitchens and famine.

The lesson helps students understand that food systems are shaped not only by climate, soil and technology, but also by power, policy, ideology and control

This lesson has been designed to keep the tone serious, respectful and age-appropriate, while still giving students meaningful tasks that encourage active thinking. Students investigate evidence, discuss interpretations, compare case studies and build careful historical judgements.

The evidence cards include deeper question prompts so that students are encouraged to move beyond quick sorting and instead think carefully about how each piece of evidence shows control, policy failure, propaganda or human impact.

Using evidence students consider the following enquiry questions:

How can food become a tool of political control?
How did Stalin and Mao change farming and food production?
Why did collectivisation and communes reduce local control over food?
How did propaganda and fear make famine worse?
Were these famines caused more by nature, policy failure, or political power?
What similarities and differences can we see between Stalin’s and Mao’s use of food systems?

This is ideal for KS3 history, enrichment, thematic curriculum work, or cross-curricular schemes on food systems, power, resources, inequality and government control.