In Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, the powerful calorie company is AgriGen.
AgriGen is one of the corporations that controls food production in the novel's biotechnology-dominated future. These firms are called calorie companies because they control the seeds, crops, and biological technologies that determine who can produce food. Their influence extends beyond commerce: they use engineered diseases, sterile seeds, private armies, and economic pressure to open markets.
The story is set in 23rd-century Thailand, where rising seas, depleted fossil fuels, and recurring plagues have transformed global society. Thailand resists the calorie companies by protecting a reserve of genetically viable seeds and restricting foreign biological imports. AgriGen therefore has a strong motive to discover and gain access to the Thai seedbank.
Anderson Lake, one of the novel's central characters, works publicly on spring-powered technology but is secretly an economic hitman for AgriGen. PurCal and RedStar are also calorie companies, so they are plausible distractors, but AgriGen is the corporation most directly tied to Anderson's mission and the plot's central struggle over food sovereignty.
The novel was published in 2009 and won both the 2010 Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel.