July 6th, 2022
Via Quartz Africa, an article on Turkey’s plans to secure food supplies via Sudan, despite previous failure: Turkey has been struggling to feed its entire population since 2015. The government has cited climate change and the constant refugee crisis as the major causes. But to avert the situation, the country now wants to revisit a plan it started in 2016 but […]
Read more »Breaking Bread: How Wheat Remade the World
June 30th, 2022
Via Milken Institute, review of a new book Oceans of Grain, that goes beyond the rise of American wheat to reinterpret world history as an epic of control of the flows of nutrition: You cannot not know history,” said the American architect Philip Johnson. (Though he did successfully conceal his years as a young fascist demagogue in […]
Read more »June 30th, 2022
Via Eurasianet, an article on a new investigation that has found that agricultural firms connected to powerful Azerbaijanis, including the first family, were given non-transparent contracts to develop land in Karabakh: Agricultural land in the territories Azerbaijan retook in the 2020 war with Armenia are being developed by companies connected to top government officials, a new […]
Read more »Costly Food = Global Unrest
June 25th, 2022
Courtesy of The Economist, a report on how costly food and energy are fostering global unrest: “Money no longer had any value in Istanbul,” laments the narrator of “My Name is Red”, a novel by Orhan Pamuk set in the 16th century. “[B]akeries that once sold large…loaves of bread for one silver coin now baked […]
Read more »June 22nd, 2022
Via Asia Times, an article on the food nationalism crisis that looms over Asia: Philippine President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr is turning Manila political tradition on its head by taking on the additional title of minister of agriculture. It’s not that Marcos, who takes office on June 30, has vast farming experience or degrees in horticulture. But […]
Read more »Turkey Plans to Lease Foreign Farmland
June 20th, 2022
Via the Hurriyet Daily News, a report on Turkey’s plan to lease farmland in foreign countries such as Venezuela and Sudan: Turkey plans to lease farmlands in several counties in Africa and Latin America to grow crops to boost agricultural production amid growing global concerns over food security. Authorities have been exploring such opportunities in 10 nations, besides Venezuela and […]
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