Archive for August, 2022

What Is Food Sovereignty?

Via The Good Trade, clarification around the terms ‘food sovereignty’ and ‘food security’: Have you heard the term “food sovereignty?” The movement has gathered steam in recent years, with the term regularly popping up in publications like The Guardian, Forbes, and Business Insider.  While first coined by La Via Campesina, an “international peasants movement” representing […]

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Sierra Leone Passes New Laws To Boost Landowners’ Rights

Via Reuters, an article examining Sierra Leone’s new laws to boost landowners’ rights: Sierra Leone’s parliament on Monday passed two laws that lawyers say will help boost the rights of rural landowners and women against land grabs by big mining and agribusiness firms. The West African country has a history of sometimes deadly conflict between local […]

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Carbon Farming vs. Traditional Farming

Courtesy of The New York Times, another look at the growing clash between farm owners and forestry investors, this time in New Zealand where a growing price on greenhouse emissions is causing investors to rush in and to buy up pastures to plant carbon-sucking trees: Horehore Station, a sheep and cattle ranch, sprawls across 4,000 acres […]

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More Energy on Less Land: Renewable Power vs. Food

Via Yale 360, a look at how the push for renewables is leading to land-use conflicts: rom the ground, the new solar farm shimmers like a mirage oasis on a hot summer day. Instead of row after slanting row of shiny panels stretching taller than corn, this array, mounted directly on the earth, lies flat […]

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Does IFC Bankroll Destructive Agribusiness?

Via Food Tank, commentary on the role that organizations like the International Finance Corporation play in bankrolling destructive agribusiness: In late June, the World Bank’s private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), approved a US$200M loan to agribusiness giant Louis Dreyfus Company (LDC). Under the guise of “sustainable development,” the loan will be used to […]

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The Weaponization Of Food

Via Eurasia Review, commentary on the weaponization of food: When Russia bombed the port in Odesa last week, it was not an auspicious beginning to the new deal on grain exports. If anyone believed that this agreement between Moscow and Kyiv would have some positive spillover effect on the war grinding on elsewhere in Ukraine, […]

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About This Blog And Its Author
Seeds Of A Revolution is committed to defining the disruptive geopolitics of the global Farms Race.  Due to the convergence of a growing world population, increased water scarcity, and a decrease in arable land & nutrient-rich soil, a spike of international investment interest in agricultural is inevitable and apt to bring a heretofore domestic industry into a truly global realm.  Whether this transition involves global land leases or acquisitions, the fundamental need for food & the protectionist feelings this need can give rise to is highly likely to cause such transactions to move quickly into the geopolitical realm.  It is this disruptive change, and the potential for a global farms race, that Seeds Of A Revolution tracks, analyzes, and forecasts.

Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has long held a keen interest in natural resource policy and the geopolitical implications of anticipated stresses in the areas of freshwater scarcity, biodiversity reserves & parks, and farm land.  Monty has lived, worked, and traveled in more than forty countries spanning Africa, China, western Europe, the Middle East, South America, and Southeast & Central Asia, and his personal interests comprise economic development, policy, investment, technology, natural resources, and the environment, with a particular focus on globalization’s impact upon these subject areas.  Monty writes about freshwater scarcity issues at www.waterpolitics.com and frontier investment markets at www.wildcatsandblacksheep.com.