Presentation short abstract

This presentation explores the data imaginaries in efforts to commercialise regenerative agriculture, focusing on transnational food corporations and the ag tech startups delivering sensors and software for the measurement, reporting and verification of regenerative agriculture.

Presentation long abstract

In the halls of agribusiness, an increasing number of transnational food corporations are exploring 'data-driven' approaches to understand, measure and implement so-called 'regenerative agriculture' in their supply chains. New 'ag tech' startups are scurrying to develop software and sensors which implement such efforts. This dash for 'regen ag' can be seen as the latest iteration in efforts to 'green' capitalism via the transformation of nature into metrics that make it legible to corporate and financial logics of decision-making. This raises questions over how the understanding of nature is transformed through such operations of measurement and quantification, and over the power asymmetries between 'data producers' and 'data harvesters' - i.e. between farmers that produce data points and the startups and corporations that have access to the predictive power afforded by large-scale datasets. In this presentation, I analyse the data imaginaries of transnational food corporations and digital software startups that are pursuing efforts to commercialise regenerative agriculture. Drawing on published reports and interviews with those working in the space I explore the promises that are produced around 'data-driven' approaches to regenerative agriculture, and how these connect to imaginations of environmental crisis in the agrifood sector, relationships between agribusiness firms and farmers, and strategies for securing profits in the future. The analysis provides insight into how major food corporations' 'regen ag'-driven attempts to mitigate environmental risks might reshape power relations in the global agrifood sector, and more broadly on the epistemic operations that translate ecological concerns into opportunities for capital accumulation.