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The Agrarian South and the Industrial Revolution 4.0: Food Sovereignty against the Financial Agritech Accumulation Regime Dr. Bikrum Gill Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech Wednesday, November 10, 2021 2-3 pm ET This talk considers the implications of global capitalism’s emergent strategy of “Industrial Revolution 4.0” for food and agricultural systems in the Global South. Industrial Revolution 4.0 refers to the increasing role of machine learning and artificial intelligence in organizing economic production and consumption. For capital, this opens the possibility for a new accumulation regime of financial speculation via data mining that can overcome the constraints it continues to experience in generating sufficient profits from the real economy. The food and agricultural systems of the Global South have been targeted by global governance institutions and global capital as fertile grounds for the implementation of this mode of capitalist development. They argue that capital investment that provisions farmers with smart apps, data analytics, and precision agriculture, can enhance the aims of productivity, sustainability, and livelihood security. Indeed, this is the vision that has animated both the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and the contentious 2020 farm laws in India. Peasants and farmers have been less convinced by such claims, however, as seen in the large scale protests in India over the past year and the rejection of the UN Food Systems Summit by La Via Campesina. In this talk, Dr. Gill will assess these two contending visions of the future of food and agriculture in the Global South, and consider, in particular, the tension between the food sovereignty approach and the “New Vision for Agriculture” associated with the Industrial Revolution 4.0. Register at this link: https://tinyurl.com/DrBikrumGill More information is in the attached flier and on our website<https://foodsystems.centers.vt.edu/events-and-speakers/UpcomingEvents/BikrumGillNov2021.html>. We welcome you to share with your networks.