Agriculture Technology

Sagari Ramdas shows how agribusiness use big tech and big data to fulfil their ‘sustainability goals’ from indigenous Adivasi farmers of Andhra Pradesh, India. It turns out to be a case of exploitation in the name of sustainability.

The world is never short of food supply issues. They become headlines on economic and political pages, as when the US food price index surged 3.1-4.2% in 2021, and China urged its people to stock up on food ahead of winter. Scientists have resorted to plant-based meat, cultured meat and genetically engineered plants to mitigate food shortages. The author believes that some emergent food technologies are promising in terms of addressing the problems of feeding the poor, biodiversity, and climate change, yet there are also new challenges to be resolved.

Indonesia has long faced the serious issue of land grabs, driving indigenous and rural communities into conflict with plantation, forestry and infrastructure developers. Could digitising land records and national geospatial information help resolve overlapping claims to land, and promote agrarian reform in Indonesia?

Corporations are now using digital tools to push methods that dominate industrial food systems, such as artificial fertilisers, mechanisation, monocultures and toxic pesticides, onto remaining small-scale farming and fishing operations. Current trends in digitalisation threaten biodiversity, the wider environment and human health, yet there are few challenges to the tech industry’s hype about a ‘fourth industrial revolution’.