Session Description

How The Changing Landscape in International Affairs is Affecting Agriculture and Digitalization

Thursday, November 21, 2024

8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.

From the end of the Cold War until Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the United States was the dominant global power in the world. That has begun to change. The world is becoming multipolar -- rising and falling great powers are competing for prosperity, territory, and influence as the U.S. is unable and/or unwilling to maintain order in all parts of the world. This shift towards multipolarity first began in the early 2010s, but has accelerated significantly in recent years -- its impacts on trade (deglobalization), energy (renewables), and technology (tech sovereignty) have become apparent. This session will explain the concept of multipolarity with reference to whatever is attracting headlines on the day of the presentation -- and will build on that argument by showing specifically on how multipolarity is affecting agriculture and the emerging digital economy. It will challenge the audience to think through both the challenges and opportunities posed by these changes.

Learner Outcomes:

1. An understanding of how the world is changing -- the goal here is to provide context and perspective so that one can begin to interpret global events as part of a global system undergoing chance rather than the doom & gloom that dominates headlines/mainstream analysis today.
   
2. Global agriculture was built for a unipolar world, where a U.S.-dominated world order exports surplus to poorer countries unable to feed themselves. Multipolarity has profound implications for the future of the global food system, which is suffering its most significant stresses since the current system arose in the early 20th century due to the invention of fertilizer and World War I.
   
3. Technology is not apolitical -- technological advancements are often defined by geopolitical competition. A listener will be given examples of the relationship between technology and geopolitics in the past (crude oil and semiconductors will serve as the primary examples), and will be able to map geopolitical competition onto the digital map of the future after listening to the presentation.