International Day of peasant struggle

Dear friends,

Today is the International Day of Peasant Struggle, when farmers and their allies are mobilizing around the world to defend agroecology and food sovereignty against the violence of the corporate food system.

In ETC Group, we join the struggle by publishing our new discussion paper, “Trojan Horses on the Farm: Challenging the digitalization of the agrifood chain (six key questions)”, as a contribution to the current critical debate about digitalization taking place within social movements and society. Please help us to share it widely with social movement and other allies!
Our research shows that digitalization is progressively entering farms, big and small, now in areas of the Global South as well as in the Global North. It comes disguised as an alluring high tech input, a Trojan farmhorse, with fleets of drones, smart ‘data-driven’ tractors, fancy apps and sensors. But in the belly of the beast lies the huge agribusiness corporate sector which has joined forces with the Big Data giants to strengthen its grip over our food systems. 

Our new discussion paper shows that digital agriculture actually comes with a heavy price. Farmers entering corporate digital agriculture usually have to sign a contract with a company, forcing them to buy seeds and agrochemicals from that same company, to implement its ‘advice’, and to give free access to their data. Knowingly or not, they allow a tight surveillance of their farm, their environment and every move they make. 

As a result, farmers lose autonomy and knowledge. They become mere implementers of Big Ag and Big Tech. This goes completely against the practice of food sovereignty which is based on communities controlling the way food is produced, traded and consumed.

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???? ☕️ Listen to our 4-podcast mini-series  “Who will feed us” to see how the digitalization of food and agriculture is spreading and how social movements are responding. Hear from academics and activists talking about the impacts of digitalization including ETC's Neth Daño and Kavya Chowdhry, Kelly Bronson in Canada, Sagari R. Ramdas in India and Camila Moreno in Brazil.???????? ???? Watch and share our animated video: Big Brother is Coming to the Farm, now available in 12 languages! – Arabic, Portuguese, Bisaya, Filipino, Bahasa Indonesia, Italiano, Japanese, Kiswahili, Français, Espagnol and English, which can all be found here, and Japanese, which can be found here.

???????? ✊???? Read the report: “Trojan Horses on the Farm: Challenging the digitalization of the agrifood chain (six key questions)”

Thanks for reading!

Please help us spread the word: https://www.etcgroup.org/ and @ETC_Group

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