NEW DELHI: Involvement of Big Tech Giants in farming will jeopardise farmers and food sustainability, warns a new report from the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).
Major tech companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Alibaba are reshaping food production through Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is contributing to increased farmer debt, dependency, and climate risks.
IPES-Food is a global think tank that guides actions for sustainable food systems worldwide. The organization conducts research in areas such as political economy, nutrition, climate change, ecology, agronomy, agroecology, and economics, while also being actively involved in political processes.
The report titled "Head In The Cloud" highlights how these tech giants dominate funding and policy spheres, receiving substantial public funding while undermining initiatives that could provide farmers with greater autonomy and sustainability.
The analysis reveals that industrial agriculture is increasingly structured around data-driven "precision" tools developed through partnerships between Big Tech and Big Agro. These capital-intensive models often require substantial upfront investments, which increase financial risks for farmers and marginalize smaller-scale producers.
Additionally, the report warns that these data-intensive systems consume enormous amounts of energy, minerals, and water resources, lock agriculture into input-intensive monocultures, and increase vulnerability to climate shocks.
Big Tech firms are utilizing AI and cloud-based systems to influence decisions regarding crops and inputs. In practice, this means that farming decisions are often mediated by proprietary algorithms that lack transparency and accountability, stripping farmers of their knowledge and decision-making autonomy.
At the same time, these companies are collecting data from farms for profit, depriving farmers of control and ownership over their own information.
As a result, a small number of technology firms are gaining unprecedented influence over how food is produced, both now and in the future, the report concludes.
The report advocates for a just, resilient, and sustainable food system to address climate change and global instability.
Experts at IPES-Food emphasize that achieving a fair and sustainable food system requires changing who controls innovation, who benefits from it, and redefining what we consider innovation in the first place.