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Long abstract:

Agrifoodtech's rise is fueled by investors seeking impact-driven investment opportunities. Building on the triple-win-narrative associated with agrifoodtech, over the last decade, venture capital (VC) funds have successfully attempted to exploit this interest by advertising investments into agrifoodtech startups as an opportunity that not only promise good returns on investments but further contribute to the sustainable transformation of food systems. However, more information is needed about how these financial actors themselves imagine their investments into agrifoodtech startups as a contribution to sustainable food futures and how these imaginations, in turn, shape the development and commercialization processes of agrifoodtech. Building on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Dutch innovation ecosystem 'Foodvalley, I will explore VC funds' promises of creating 'impact' through investments and their consequences. By analyzing the explicit and tacit assumptions that animate VC fund employees' thinking about the interplay between profit and impact, I will show how these professionals are able to navigate the inherent friction between the two by imagining 'real impact' as both a requirement for and an outcome of successful business creation. Eventually, I argue that a critical analysis of the imaginations, contexts, constraints, and incentives behind the funding of agrifoodtech startups allows us to understand better the forces shaping the emergence of agrifoodtech, as well as to engage in a more informed discussion about who wins and who loses what through digital agriculture.

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Long abstract:

In both policy and private sector narratives, the digital transformation of agriculture is often portrayed as both necessary and urgent (Muench et al. 2022). Scholars in domains including STS have, however, cautioned that Agriculture 4.0 technologies risk locking in unsustainable pathways and power imbalances rather than fostering more radical transitions to approaches such as agroecology (Prause, Hackfort, and Lindgren 2021). To date, scholarship on who is playing a dominant role in processes of digital transformation has focused largely on incumbent agri-food actors (Bronson and Sengers 2022) and, to a growing extent, start-ups (Klerkx and Villalobos 2024). Comparatively little attention has been paid to the growing presence of technology giants such as Amazon or Alphabet (Google’s parent company).

I aim to contribute to filling this gap through a case study of Mineral: a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet that spun out of its secretive X Development Labs in 2023. Mineral bills itself as ‘discovering the intelligence of plantkind to feed and protect humankind’ (Mineral 2023), and upon launching claimed to have ‘already surveyed and analyzed 10% of the world’s farmland’ (Burwood-Taylor 2023). Building on critiques of precision agriculture (Stock and Gardezi 2021) as well as recent work that interrogates the entry of tech giants into new sectors through the lens of intellectual monopoly capitalism (Rikap 2023) I use a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the drivers and potential impacts of the Mineral’s entry into the world of agriculture.

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Short abstract:

The convergence of the Green Revolution (GR) and digital agriculture is transforming agrarian relations of power. This paper examines the contemporary practices and technologies of the GR, which increasingly rely on technoscience to assetize and financialize intangibles such as data and carbon.

Long abstract:

Over the past two decades, efforts to foment a ‘second’ Green Revolution on the African Continent have led critical agrarian scholars and historians to reassess how we understand the ‘Green Revolution’ (Cullather 2010, Shiva 2016, Hurt 2020, Branski 2022). Scholars have not only challenged historical narratives that high-yielding crops and ‘magic seeds’ have significantly reduced hunger, they have also historically contextualized the Green Revolution within a longer arc of capitalist accumulation strategies, racialized forms of dominations, and reconfigurations of state power (Patel 2013, Eddens 2017). Contemporary attempts to promote a Green Revolution differ in some ways from the previous wave; Sustainability and nutrition have been incorporated into narratives of the Green Revolution and transgenic seeds have been added to the technologies introduced. But perhaps the most significant change in recent years has been the growing focus on digitalization (Abdulai 2022). The convergence of the Green Revolution and “Fourth Agricultural Revolution,” is integrating agrarian worlds into new regimes of capitalist accumulation. Building on scholarship that has emphasized the need to integrate the analytical tools of STS and political economy (Birch 2020), this paper sketches a new analytic framework for understanding the contemporary forms of power of the Green Revolution. We describe how digital technologies combine new modes of discipline and surveillance with the assetization of human and more-than-human relations. We suggest that this is fundamentally transforming the terrain of resistance for agrarian movements, which are increasingly fought over the knowledge, technoscientific devices, and infrastructures that are enabling this transformation.

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Long abstract:

The global food system is characterized by market concentration and oligopoly. In our paper we focus on the most powerful input supply and machinery companies and analyze how these firms create value, both economic and otherwise, from big data. In digital capitalism, data is valorized across sectors; personal data is aggregated into large-scale datasets, a practice that feeds economic concentration and monopolization. That big data also has become central to the business model for agricultural companies is irrefutable; it is a claim made by the companies themselves. Yet, little is known about their specific strategies to do so. We aim to fill this gap, asking how is agricultural data transformed into value by the most powerful agribusinesses and ag tech firms?

Through the lens of assetization, we examine corporate strategies for transforming agricultural data into value. We draw on literature from food studies, specifically political economic analyses of the historic practices of agricultural corporations, as well as literature from critical data studies that investigates data as an asset. For our analysis, we rely on a variety of gray literature and public-facing documents: financial documents, sustainability and shareholder reports, terms of use, license agreements, and news articles. Our results contribute to the critical data studies literature on agricultural big data by identifying three main strategies of assetization: securing relationships and dependence; price setting and data sharing; and product development and targeted marketing.

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In the past few years, digital technologies have entered the rural space as a triple-win solution capable of achieving, at the same time, food security goals, reducing farming’s environmental impact, and enhancing farm profitability or - in the global South - lifting smallholder farmers out of poverty. However, with the exception of some sociological inquiries in the Global North, empirical studies looking at Global South contexts, often the main target of donors and international development agencies’ discourses, remain scarce. This research aims at filling this gap. By looking at discourses around digitalization of agriculture in Africa, in combination with in-depth field research in one the major African digital innovation hubs (Ghana), our paper discusses the tensions between the grand claims of international donors and some of the material enactments of digital farming technologies on the ground. By highlighting 1. the limited accessibility of most of these technologies for small scale farmers; 2. the ambiguous and complex role of these technologies in empowering smallholder farmers in their daily practices and 3. the often overlooked importance of farmers’ data for value extraction in most AgTech companies' business models, we contend that the discourses of policy makers, tech companies and international donors around the digitalization of agriculture in Africa must be carefully scrutinized.

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Long abstract:

An increasing number of bottom-up initiatives and successful start-ups (e.g., Agrowing and TaniHub in agriculture, eFishery and Aruna in fisheries) are connecting end-customers with farmers in Indonesia. While mainstream news media often portrays young agricultural entrepreneurs as successful entrepreneurs for improving agricultural innovation and food security, rural farming communities grapple with persistent poverty, land and food insecurities, and climate vulnerabilities. Marginal farmers confront multiple challenges, including limited access to technology such as smartphones and the internet, as well as varying levels of trust within their communities, digital literacy, and awareness. This paper critically reflects on the assumptions and implications of digital transformation and government policies in Indonesia’s agricultural sector. We pose questions regarding the beneficiaries of this transformation, and what practices and outcomes are facilitated by digital marketing tools (Agritech). Drawing on prior and current research, we outline how discourses surrounding youth farming allocate responsibility and entrepreneurial capabilities to individual farmers, and open discussion about alternative pathways for inclusive digital transformation in rural Southeast Asia.

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Long abstract:

Agricultural drones have diffused rapidly in Vietnam since 2020, particularly in the Mekong Delta region, the country's main rice producing area. This study examines how the introduction of drones in agriculture has changed the nature of cooperatives as rural socio-economic organizations in Vietnam.

Vietnamese cooperatives have purchased the, still expensive, drones with government subsidies, to provide pesticide spraying services to their member farmers. Interestingly, the introduction of capital- and technology-intensive agriculture, as represented by the use of drones, has revitalized cooperatives as their membership has increased in this region, where the organization rate had been low due to the antipathy towards communist organizations since the unification of Vietnam as a communist state.

At the same time, cooperatives seem to transform into quasi-corporate entities. This study argues that the use of digital technologies allows cooperatives, as owners of the technologies, to reap an increasing share of farm income through a ‘farming as a service’ model. Moreover, through the commodification of farm data collected by the drones, cooperatives might generate additional revenue in the near future. This may further alter power relations between cooperatives and member farmers to the detriment of the latter. The proliferation of drones, thanks to large government subsidies, has drastically reduced the burden (labor) on farmers, but contrary to the government’s intentions, cooperatives seem to be losing their role as the embodiment of a cooperative/collectivist ideology.

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Long abstract:

This paper is about the digitalisation of farm practices and the impact on small-holders in India. In 2020, three new farm laws were introduced which urged farmers to use smart technology. This entailed, for example, online platforms to provide timely information about local prices and supply, and technologies to advise farmers on ‘precision agriculture’ - on inputs, soil health, weather, and crops to be sown. Despite these alleged benefits, these laws have been met with unprecedented protests by farmers across the country since December 2020. Farmers are against the new laws because they fear that liberalising, deregulating, digitalising agriculture, and opening up the market by loosening state control, will usher in the corporatisation of Indian agriculture. Even though these laws were repealed, the farmers’ lobby is planning to launch fresh protests to compel the government to enact pro-farmers’ policies. The face of the protests are large land-holders from the northern part of the country, particularly Punjab and Haryana, which benefitted during the Green Revolution in the late 1960s. This paper argues that while there does not appear to be much mobilisation among small-holders, they would be seriously affected by the new laws. The laws would ultimately lead to further pauperization of rural India.

This paper uses preliminary findings from research on the digitalisation of food assistance, to illustrate the effect of digitalisation on small-holder farmers from central India. These farmers did not benefit from the Green Revolution but form the bulk of rural households.

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Long abstract:

This paper will consider how public funding in wealthy industrialized countries influences the economic geographies of data intensive technologies in agriculture. While research has considered how private funders, startups, and large agribusiness plays a role in shaping a smart farming ecosystem in developing countries, there has been less focus on the role of the state in these tech spaces. This paper will review funding mechanisms in Europe that support the development of data intensive technologies, as well as publicly funded projects, to consider how discourses of global development are constructed within the pursuit of precision agriculture. The concept of socio-technical imaginaries will be used to explore the ways that new data-intensive technologies are interpolated into national visions of future food production relations globally, and particular attention will be paid to how commitments to sustainable development, responsible research and innovation, and equitable development are pursued. The findings of the paper will provide insights into how new agricultural technologies play a role in shaping national imaginaries and material investment in new agricultural technologies aimed at global food production.

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Long abstract:

Digital technologies are used on fish farms, among others, to track spawning, automate feeding, simulate algae concentrations or to predict consumer demand. The (contested) promise of these technologies is to increase food production, while reducing pollution and waste through efficiency gains and decreased resource usage. However, we rarely ask how work practices change with these technologies, in particular if and whether the experienced relations between workers, animals and habitats change.

As part of ethnographic fieldwork on two small-scale fish farms in the Netherlands, I follow how farm managers test digital technologies’ capacities to deliver on the simultaneous promise of productivity and sustainability. I zoom in on the practices of a relatively new role, the data analyst, showing how this worker negotiates responsibilities of care for the data, care for the fish and productivity on an everyday basis. A recurring negotiation, for instance, is between optimizing a system for enhancing fish growth and optimizing for circularity (re-use) of water. This project thereby combines an analysis of data practices with insights about how diverse, interdependent relations of care between workers, animals and habitats are rearranged in work practices (Verbeek 2014; Pols 2015).

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Short abstract:

This agricultural promotion and practice case study in Taiwan illustrates how "social enterprise" serves as a boundary organization. Analyzing its work culture will help to understand the construction of "sustainability" and the limits of emerging technologies in the transformation of agriculture.

Long abstract:

Taiwan is known worldwide for its chip technology industry; however, one of the costs has been the sacrifice of the agricultural sector. In particular, the liberalization of rice imports has exacerbated the loss of the rural community. The government hopes that through assisting digital transformation, the agricultural issue will no longer be a stumbling block to industrialization but a national strategy integrated with the goals of food security, green economy, and global free trade. However, policy implementation, such as establishing the digitalized traceability system and certification systems, has attracted much criticism and resistance, questioning that these models originating in large-scale agribusiness are not conducive to the Taiwanese countryside, which is characterized by fragmented farmland and complex tenancy relationships.

In this paper, I take the case of Caitian Company, an agricultural promotion organization founded by former anti-WTO social activists, to explore the conflict between heterogeneous actors and value systems. Caitian has positioned itself as a social enterprise, strategically constructed the concept, brand, and practice of "eco-friendly farming," translated the principles of environmental governance into rural life and local customs, and successfully connected different interests from the government, farmers, and sales channels. This study also analyzes Caitian's organizational culture and how it mediates between the public sector and enterprises, exchanging resources, knowledge, and manpower. Based on Caitian's experience in connecting food testing laboratories and farming mobile apps to actual fields, this paper argues that intensive boundary work is the key to new agricultural innovation.

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Long abstract:

Government-mandated livestock traceability systems in Britain and the European Union involving the allocation of unique lifetime identifiers to individual animals create new possibilities for integrating large quantities of data about animals’ health, management, productivity and movements. Yet there is currently little consensus on how such data should be used and whom it should benefit. Plausible futures range from ones where data serve commercial, vertically integrated farming systems to ones where animal data are governed through a national data system and used for the public good, as has been implemented in countries like Ireland. This paper uses the case of sheep farming in Britain to ask, what visions do diverse actors in the sector have for data integration and what issues, challenges and tensions arise from these visions? British sheep farming presents a distinctive case for anticipatory analysis because electronic identification (EID) of sheep is mandated but data integration and use aren't yet widespread. Moreover, the sector includes a wide diversity of production systems and actors, from commercial lowland farming to marginal hill farming and small-scale organic production, with pressures to attend to productivity, welfare and the environment. It remains unclear whose visions, values and voices will shape the design and governance of data systems. The paper draws on documentary analysis, focus groups and interviews with actors across the British sheep industry. Based on this research, the paper proposes several principles for the responsible development of national livestock data systems that are inclusive and responsive to the needs of diverse communities.

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Long abstract:

Precision Fermentation, as an emerging food technology, promises to offer solutions to well-known food systems problems, such as environmental impact and ethical issues. However, the introduction of this novel mode of production, which offers a molecularly similar end-product as milk, also challenges the current means of dairy and meat production, especially for dairy farmers and their livelihoods. While these products are not yet on the European market, academic discussions and media reports have been focusing on the potential carried by these technologies. Even though the consequences for different stakeholders have been increasingly considered in the anticipatory discussions, the consequences to be faced by farmers are usually only speculated and neglected. In this presentation, we focus on the perspectives of dairy farmers in the Netherlands towards the development of Precision Fermentation dairy. Interviews with family farms were conducted in 2022, and they show that while the farmers are open to innovation and see the need to change their farming practices in the face of the new ecological moment, they also feel vulnerable and insecure regarding planning long-term transformations due to the new environment-led policies of the Dutch government. When discussing the introduction of new technologies, we could also shed light on what they were interested in adopting and what would be non-negotiable issues in their life as farmers. Transitions to more sustainable and just food systems should be inclusive and embrace the perspectives of different stakeholders that are going to be impacted by the introduction of new technologies.

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Long abstract:

This paper delves into the sensory assessments conducted by growers in agriculture (Kasic, 2022 ; Javelle, 2023) to observe their adoption of digital sensors in their embodied assessments activities. Growers develop experiential knowledge and experiments in their fields (Pitt, 2021 ; Hansson, 2019 ; Krzywoszynska 2016), and if this practical knowledge is often devalued, the development and use of digital tools that aim to enhance their abilities should be concerned with their tacit and embodied expertise. Grounded in preliminary ethnographic investigations conducted among Swiss farmers utilizing sensors within commercial greenhouses, this study draws upon insights from biosensors studies (Nafus, 2013), literature focused on digitally equiped sensory diagnosis in medical settings (Maslen, 2017 ; Grosjean, 2010), and more broadly the work on professional vision (Grasseni, 2022 ; Tomas et al. 2020 ; Goodwin 1994), to explore the intricate process through which these digital innovations become integrated into the daily routines and decision-making practices of growers. To do so, I will examine the extent to which digital sensors complement, supplement, or potentially replace traditional sensory assessments performed by growers, to investigate how these technologies may participate in human (sensory and experiential) knowledge about industrially cultivated plants.

By closely examining the practical implications of incorporating digital sensors into growers' routines, this proposal endeavors to shed light on agricultural sustainability practices. In particular, I will focus on the integration of digital sensors into growers' decision-making processes based on plant assessments concerning the application of fertilizers, pesticides, and other sustainability-oriented decisions such as water and energy consumption, avoiding a specific definition of sustainability to follow practices from the ground up. By describing the intricate details of plant assessments and subsequent decisions made by growers, I seek to unravel the complexities of sensor usage in real-world agricultural settings. Through this nuanced exploration, I aim to contribute insights into the evolving dynamics between traditional sensory assessments and emerging digital technologies in contemporary agricultural practices.