In this post, the authors offer a critical analysis of biodigital technologies and their expanding role in food and agriculture. Central to their argument is the question of who ultimately stands to benefit from this …
Innovation as Bullshit
In this post, Innovation as Bullshit [*], Saskia Colombant and Priscilla Claeys show how the innovation narrative, or the attempt to reclaim the term, does not serve the objectives of movements advocating for radical and …
Building technological sovereignty in the digital area
In this blog, author Coline Prévost looks at how at a time of increasing digitalisation of agriculture and food systems, militant peasant organisations are mapping out other paths of innovation, on the fringes of colonial …
Remote Control and Peasant Intelligence
New report exposes how digitalization and artificial intelligence risk undermining peasant knowledge and autonomy. Digital technologies are often touted as a silver bullet to respond to the interconnected crises of food, climate and biodiversity. Although …
Technology and food sovereignty
“The knowledge of peasants, fisherfolk and pastoralists is our insurance for food during crisis.” Andrea Ferrante (Schola Campesina) People’s Counter-Mobilization to Transform Corporate Food Systems In July 2021, over 300 global civil society and peasant …
The Stories We Trust : Regulating Genome Edited Organisms
In ongoing discussions about the regulation of genome edited organisms in the UK and the EU, existing regulation to prevent harm to human and planetary health is often portrayed as the ‘bad guy’ trying to …
21st Century Agroecology
From online food retail to big ag-data, technology is creeping ever further into food and farming systems. In this blog Lynne Davis CEO of Open Food Network UK explores what it takes to shift the …
Short statement on Defra ‘gene technology’ consultation
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is currently running an online consultation on the ‘regulation of genetic technologies’, due to close on March 17th, 2021. We stand with a number of …
Prioritising Agroecology and Challenging Corporate Technology-Led Approaches in the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit and Beyond
In December 2019, Ms. Agnes Kalibata, president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), was appointed as the UN Secretary-General’s special envoy to the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit. Over the last …
Farm Hack shows us everything that it is wrong with UK agricultural training and research
Farm Hack is a response to a need – not only for access to often fundamental agricultural knowledge, but also for a different way of organising, relating, and owning in UK farming systems. It is …
The Dark Side of Innovation for Family Farmers: Reflections on an International Symposium on Innovation
This post explores the dark side of innovation, investigating the rapid rise to prominence of the term ‘Innovation’ within agricultural development, and presents some reasons why it is an inadequate framework to address the deep …
The battle for the future of farming: what you need to know
Most concede that there is an urgent need to radically transform our food systems. But the proposed innovations for more sustainable food systems are drastically different. Which we choose will have long-lasting effects on human …
Highlighting the importance of power and governance in the debate on “innovation” in agriculture: A contribution to the HLPE process
Agroecology when articulated as a transformative approach to food system, is the most promising “innovation” (and set of “innovations”) at play at the global level. Yet, the current dominant innovation systems, in a wider disabling …