It is possible to get the impression from media sources that a new wave of digital technology is sweeping the agricultural world. Farmers everywhere have access to incredible new devices and services. This will inevitably increase food production and make everything better on earth. Apparently, there are drones that spray chemicals only where they are needed, autopilot tractors and harvesters that fully plow, and even robots that lend a helping hand during the harvest. Behind the scenes is a smooth digital process that keeps farmers informed, uses artificial intelligence to help equitably, and ensures that produce is efficiently moved along the “smart” and possibly autonomous food chain. Some may think that there is a process or that it will soon come to fruition. The future of “precision farming” or sensor-rich “smart farming” is believed to be in front of us.
Similarly, beyond the farm, there are stories that suggest robots flipping burgers or waiting tables. Drones delivering groceries. Or maybe Amazon or Alphabet will soon even offer customized dietary advice or order food for us based on an analysis of our eating habits and gut health. I have. We also hear of so-called “innovation,” efforts further down the farm to transform data on food consumption into insights on new line expansions to launch. By integrating digital technology into the food system, food companies are helping me, especially in the context of rising obesity rates and obscene levels of food waste, even if they contain foods that most of us cannot live without. We should be able to calculate new ways to occupy space in our stomachs. (Frighteningly, at a time when rates of undernourishment and malnutrition are increasing).
Governments, corporations, and start-ups are all tapping into this endless stream either via snazzy short videos published on social media channels, or by generating editable material for “clickbait” articles in online publications, including newspapers. Contributing to the story of technological progress. Know more. And it’s not all hype.“Big Tech” companies such as Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft conduct We know the food and agriculture sector provides a ripe harvest to generate future profits.Small and medium-sized enterprises that is Emerging to deliver new products that have the potential to create new efficiencies. The government certainly wants the agricultural sector to work more efficiently.And farmers and other food producers around the world, including many of the world’s poorest farmers, are already using some aspects of modern digital technology. can Realize that a “digital shift” in agriculture is happening. This maps to the broader development of social life as so much behavior is brought online. From “seed to shit” or, more politely, “farm to fork,” new digital technologies are at play.
But exactly where all this action leads remains unclear. Based on the scenarios depicted in stories of robots picking apples and autonomous drones exterminating pests, agricultural’s digital paradise seems far-fetched, to say the least. A more likely scenario is that digital technologies are integrated in problematic ways into agricultural practices and the wider food system. So what issues matter?
One concern is that the drive to integrate digital technology into food systems is tied to “data grabs.” The data in question isn’t just generated when farmers and their workers plant seeds or spray chemicals. Data is also generated as traders move food shipments. When a food manufacturer advertises a new product line. When a retailer makes a sale. When a consumer mentions a product, likes or dislikes on her social media channels. Data provides information and possible knowledge about what, how, where and how to produce in the future. If you envision and pursue a business model based on the idea that data is the new “cash crop” and needs to be collected, analyzed and used, you generally wonder what agtech and food companies can get. It makes sense to be skeptical. Develop new intellectual property.
Another example is that some companies have “black-boxed” their software and hardware so that only authorized suppliers or technicians can repair their tractors, or what digital services are in operation. complicating the risk of data grabs occurring. To. Companies use their power to define how technology is deployed and try to dominate smaller players (not always successful). One lesson: what agtech companies are trying at home today shows what they might be up to in emerging markets in the future (and alarm bells should ring about what startups are learning) they should consider doing it in the new product).
For some participants, data acquisition and concerns about large corporations controlling farmers may be just noise. However, there are concerns that the digital shift of the food system will amplify the power of data analysts and computer scientists working in the companies with the most computing power, accelerating the shift to a food system centered around the food system. There is also This makes us all wonder, “What kind of food system will Amazon and Alphabet produce? And if they are the big winners from this change, what will happen to the losers?”
Related to this is the fact that the digital shift in the food system will occur when another grab is deployed: the land grab. Growing inequality within and between countries and between the world’s richest minority and the world’s poorest masses has led to land grabs, often with decisions made “over the heads of the locals” Such processes need to be understood along with the growing sense encouraged by World Bank economists that land in many parts of the world is not producing adequate yields. The underlying argument is that farmers in Zambia and Thailand need urgent (perhaps now digital) assistance to approach the yields achieved in capital-intensive agriculture in the United States and Western Europe, or that it should be encouraged) by other forces. ) sell to those who can. But as Samir Amin asked almost two decades ago, what would happen to hundreds of millions more farmers if they were forced off their land? Where, exactly, should they go? ?
As a result of all this, if integrating digital technologies into the food system leads to data capture that facilitates further land grabbing, and if the food system is developed to maximize the benefits of ‘big food’. If it is transformed according to the computational model We need to critically scrutinize what is happening and see what the consequences are. In this regard, one of the possible outcomes is that the same move to satisfy investors eager for food companies to embrace digital technology and leverage data is something we are actually developing. It’s getting further and further away from the kind of food system that you need to do. Here it is worth pointing out the argument for the possibility, even the necessity, of creating alternative food systems that ensure sustainable food production, as Judith Butler argues in her.power of nonviolence“The threat to the environment, the problem of global slums, systemic racism, the statelessness of which migration is a universal responsibility, and the threat to a more complete overcoming of colonial modes of power. ”. Integration of digital technology that Some sort of food system may still be an option, if the digital shift can be twisted to help build food sovereignty. Until then, the move to integrate digital technology into food systems seems like just another element of data colonialism.
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