143 Between Employer and Self-Organisation: Belgian Workers and Miners Coping with Food Shortages Under German Occupation (1940–1944) Dirk Luyten INTRODUCTION: FOOD SUPPLY AS AN ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ISSUE In 1941, the second year of the occupation, hunger was back in Belgium. The situation was so critical that, as food historian Peter Scholliers puts it, food consumption in most cases no longer refected social standing as it typically had since the nineteenth century. Having money no longer equalled access to food, let alone substantially more and better food than others. 1 The causes of this situation were structural: industrialised and densely populated Belgium was not self-suf fcient in food. Before the war, about 50% was imported, mostly from overseas. The imports ended with the occupation and the British blockade so that imports were now © The Author(s) 2018 T. Tönsmeyer et al. (eds.), Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77467-1_8 D. Luyten (*) Belgian State Archives/CegeSoma, Brussels, Belgium e-mail: dirk.luyten@arch.be