Short Abstract

This panel examines how food systems and agricultural livelihoods are being reshaped by climate pressures, digital technologies, and gendered inequalities. It explores whose knowledge, agency and innovation count in reimagining food security for more inclusive and sustainable futures.

Description

Food systems across the Global South are undergoing profound transformations. Climate shocks, resource scarcity and digital innovations are converging to reshape the future of agriculture - yet these changes are unfolding within deeply gendered and unequal structures. While digital tools and data-driven agriculture are heralded as solutions for improving productivity and resilience, their design and deployment often reproduce longstanding exclusions in land access, credit, labour, and decision-making power. Women, who form the backbone of smallholder agriculture, remain systematically disadvantaged in access to technologies, markets and institutional support.

This panel explores how gender, technology and inequality intersect to shape the contested futures of food and farming. Drawing on empirical and conceptual work from diverse contexts, contributors interrogate whether digital agricultural technologies and climate-smart interventions are empowering or entrenching existing hierarchies. They highlight how local norms, kinship systems, and social relations mediate access to innovation, and how women’s agency - through collective action, savings groups and community networks - redefines resilience from the ground up.

By situating gendered experiences of agricultural change within broader political-economic and ecological transformations, the panel contributes to debates on power, agency, and inclusion in development. It invites discussion on how food security agendas can move beyond techno-centric and Western paradigms to embrace more plural, equitable, and context-responsive visions of agrarian futures.

This Panel has 2 pending paper proposals.
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