Digitalization and the third food regime

Louisa Prause; Sarah Hackfort; Margit Lindgren

doi:10.1007/s10460-020-10161-2

Digitalization and the third food regime

Prause, Louisa; Hackfort, Sarah; Lindgren, Margit 2021-09-01 00:00:00 This article asks how the application of digital technologies is changing the organization of the agri-food system in the context of the third food regime. The academic debate on digitalization and food largely focuses on the input and farm level. Yet, based on the analysis of 280 digital services and products, we show that digital technologies are now being used along the entire food commodity chain. We argue that digital technologies in the third food regime serve on the one hand as a continuation of established information and communication technologies, thus deepening certain features of the existing food regime such as the retail sector’s control over global commodity chains. On the other hand, digital technologies also introduce new forms of control and value extraction based on the use of data and pave the way for large tech companies to take over market shares in the agri-food sector. Finally, we find that multinational agri-food companies are starting to take on the business models of leading digital tech companies, for instance by developing digital platforms throughout the agri-food system. We argue that this shows that the broader economic restructuring of neoliberal capitalism towards digital capitalism is also making its way into the agri-food system. Keywords Food regime · Digital agriculture · Agri-food system · Food commodity chain · Agrarian labor · Digital platforms Introduction (FAO), which is about to establish an International Digital Council for Food and Agriculture (FAO 2020b). The digitalization of agriculture is widely hailed as the next The academic literature offers a slightly more nuanced agricultural revolution that will change how food is produced picture. Digital agriculture might help farmers to be more and consumed (e.g. Trendov et al. 2019). Both political and precise with inputs by offering information on ecological corporate leaders argue that digitalization offers the solution conditions through precise weather forecasts or sensors to feeding a growing world population, while at the same scanning the soil (for an overview, see Klerkx et al. 2019; time mitigating the negative environmental and climate con- Lezoche et al. 2020). Furthermore, farms will be able to sequences of (industrial) agriculture (see Newell and Taylor reduce labor costs through the use of robotics or (semi-) 2017). The digitalization of food production has become a autonomous machines. This will influence agrarian labor key component of various governments’ recent bioeconomy conditions and might lead to job losses in the sector (Carolan strategies and is being pushed in international fora such as 2019). This in turn might translate into more people leav- the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization ing rural communities to find jobs in urban centers (Rotz et al. 2019). Digital agriculture also raises questions of data security and sovereignty as well as farmer autonomy (Fraser 2019; Bronson and Knezevic 2016; Wolfert et al. 2017), Electronic supplementary material The online version of this and might enhance inequalities between farmers (Klerkx and article (https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1046 0-020-10161 -2) contains Rose 2020). supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Several studies stress the importance of looking at digi- * Louisa Prause talization within the agri-food sector as a whole (e.g. Bron- louisa.prause@hu-berlin.de son and Knezevic 2016). ‘Agriculture 4.0′ is a term given to this digital transformation that indicates “potentially game- Department of Agriculture and Food Policy, Research Group changing technologies that can dramatically affect the way BioMaterialities, Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 642 L. Prause et al. food is produced, processed, traded, and consumed” (Klerkx The article is structured as follows. First, we outline our and Rose 2020, p. 14). Nevertheless, a large proportion of theoretical framework, which is based on debates around the literature on the digitalization of the agri-food system the third food regime. Second, we provide an overview of still focuses on the digitalization of farming. Other parts of our data selection and analysis. In the empirical part of the the agri-food system like food processing, trade, transporta- paper, we identify key digital technologies for each step of tion or retail and consumption have received less attention the food commodity chain and highlight how they are chang- (but see Carolan 2018 and Fraser 2020 on food retail and ing the organization of the current food regime. Finally, we consumption; Vanderroost et al. 2017 on food packaging; conclude by reflecting on continuities and changes in the Lezoche et al. 2020 on supply chains). third food regime, and highlight the importance of digitali- The food regime concept was originally developed by zation as both a continuation of ICTs and in terms of facili- critical agrarian studies scholars in the late 1980s as a way to tating a transition towards new forms of generating value focus on the agri-food system as a whole and to identify the and corporate control. “historicized logic to the complexities of agro-food econom- ics and politics” (Pritchard 2009, p. 221). Since the begin- ning of the 2000s, the food regime approach has received Theoretical framework renewed interest, as global food politics is discussed in view of the characteristics of a third food regime. Contributions In order to better understand how digitalization might acknowledge the importance of information and communi- change the current agri-food system, we build upon the cation technology (ICT) for the development of global food food regime concept as developed chiefly by Friedmann and commodity chains—a key feature of the third food regime. McMichael (1989). Food regimes, though relatively stable, However, these debates have so far not fully engaged with are also contingent, contested and temporary “constellations the recent development of new technologies, particularly of governments, corporations, collective organisations, and digitalization. McMichael (2019) mentions the increasing individuals that allow for renewed accumulation of capital importance of “bio-capitalism (…) and the technologization based on shared definition of social purpose by key actors, of nature and digitalization” (133), Dörr (2018) notes cor- while marginalising others …” (Friedmann 2005, p. 228). porate concentrations in the area of precision farming, and How a food regime is organized has important implications Newell and Taylor (2017) present an interesting discourse for farmers, food workers and consumers, and shapes the analysis on ‘climate-smart’ agriculture. Yet a more system- power relations between these groups and agri-food corpora- atic engagement with digital technologies is so far missing. tions (Friedmann 2005, p. 228). In this article, we bring together the debates on digital The analysis of food regimes is methodologically con- agriculture and the third food regime in order to provide a sistent with commodity chain approaches in the tradition of better understanding of how digital technologies are chang- Friedland (1984), since it traces production relations glob- ing the agri-food system. This is particularly relevant since ally. Yet it also goes further in terms of integrating consump- recent contributions on the third food regime (e.g. McMi- tion and state actors—issues that have long been neglected chael 2019; Tilzey 2019) point to the transition of some in commodity chain approaches (Dixon 1999; Friedland features of the regime, to which the rise of digital technolo- 2001). Food regime analysis offers an analytical lens to gies might contribute. Our central research question is how grasp the broader economic and (geo-)political relations, the digital technologies shape the organization of the third food discursive legitimations, rules, norms and regulations, social regime. Our aim is first to provide a broader picture of the forces such as social movements, and the technical and envi- digital technologies that are currently applied in food com- ronmental changes that organize food production, consump- modity chains, and secondly to evaluate where digital tech- tion and distribution in historical constellations of power and nologies act as a mere ‘update’ of ICTs, and if and where we accumulation (Magnan 2012; Bernstein 2015). Thus, rather can identify potential shifts in the current organization of the than tracing the relations of production for a specific com- agri-food system due to digital technologies. We answer our modity, it enables us to comprehensively analyze the organi- research question through an empirical analysis of 280 key zation of the agri-food system at the macro-level. While this digital technological products and services currently offered approach admittedly omits local-level developments, it is in one or several steps of the global food commodity chain. nevertheless useful for our analysis since it offers an analyti- We focused our analysis on food crops, and excluded dairy cal lens to situate digital technologies as new forces shaping production and processing as well as livestock raising, meat the production, distribution and consumption of food in the production and aquaculture. We also excluded developments socio-economic and political context of the current agri-food in urban agriculture from our data set, since we believe that system in a historically-informed and comprehensive way. to date their contribution to the global production of food The approach distinguishes three different global remains limited. food regimes that have been interrupted by periods of 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 643 transformation and instability: the colonial food regime, food quality and safety standards (Friedmann 2005). In which corresponded with British imperial rule from the response to a growing number of increasingly environmen- 1870s to 1914; the second food regime of the post-war tally-conscious and affluent consumers in the Global North, period from 1947 until 1973, which corresponded with corporate actors, particularly supermarkets, are legitimizing American imperialism; and the third food regime, which has their actions through narratives of environmental sustain- been identified for the period from the creation of the WTO ability, which exist side-by-side with narratives developed in 1995 until today, and has been dubbed the ‘corporate during the second food regime that stress modernization, food regime’ by McMichael (2009) or the ‘corporate-envi- food security and increased yields (Bernstein 2015). In order ronmental food regime’ by Friedmann (2005). McMichael to legitimize their products as environmentally friendly, a himself, however, states that the “corporate food regime is number of supermarket-driven private certification schemes in transition” (2019, p. 118). Many of the dominant rela- have been developed, which have taken over regulatory func- tions of the third food regime are still in place, while new tions from the state. ones are emerging (McMichael 2019, p. 133). Digital tech- Large agri-food companies formed during the second nologies are thus entering the agri-food system in a period food regime now dominate the production of farm inputs, where its organization is unstable and contested, and they food trade, processing and retail, and there is even greater might play an important role in current reconfigurations corporate concentration through mergers and takeovers of the food regime. Both the first and second regimes have (Dörr 2018). Closely linked to the feature of corporate power been described extensively elsewhere (e.g. Friedmann and is the issue of financialization and the increasing influence of McMichael 1989; Friedmann 2005; McMichael 2009). We n fi ance capital on the agri-food system (Burch and Lawrence therefore focus on identifying the key characteristics of the 2009). Established agri-food companies, start-ups as well third food regime that are still in place, and point to both as land itself have become the targets of speculative invest- historical continuities as well as new emerging relations. ments by asset managers (McMichael 2019). The third food regime is characterized by neoliberal, free The third food regime inherited from the second regime market policies as the dominant mode of regulation and is the dominant production model of fossil-fuel-driven, large- driven by global market prices (McMichael 2009). However, scale and capital-intensive agro-industrial farms. This model the ongoing blockade of WTO negotiations, the recent col- was exported to the Global South as the ‘Green Revolution’ lapse of its Appellate Body, as well as the return of “agro- (Patel 2013), and since the mid-2000s has been expanded security mercantilism” (McMichael 2012) in the form of through another round of enclosures, also referred to as the land grabbing all show that neoliberal hegemony is frag- ‘global land grab’ (Prause 2020). The expansion of industrial menting (Tilzey 2019). Nevertheless, WTO rules still apply agriculture and global food trade in the third food regime is and constitute a residual feature of the third food regime, contributing significantly to the advancement of the climate while emerging developments include bi- and multilateral crisis and the marginalization of the cultural and ecological trade agreements as well as various corporate and financial knowledge of small-scale farmers (McMichael 2009). The deals and mergers with and across states (McMichael 2019). corresponding tension between an agro-ecological small- Unlike the two previous regimes, the third does not feature scale model of farming and large-scale industrial agriculture one hegemonic nation state, but points to multipolarity, with is crucial. Food sovereignty and agro-ecology movements China being the most important new player on the agri-food around the globe are struggling to enact a different mode of stage alongside Brazil and India (McMichael 2019). agricultural production and a reorganization and democrati- The third food regime is characterized by the rapid expan- zation of the agri-food system towards more localized, eco- sion of global food commodity chains. Many countries of the logical means of food production and consumption, which Global South are now incorporated into commodity chains would guarantee the sovereignty and well-being of family as sources of cheap processed foodstuffs on the one hand and farmers and sustain nature’s ability to reproduce itself (Frie- of fresh fruit and vegetables for an affluent consumer class drich et al. 2019; Prause and Le Billon 2020). in the Global North on the other (Burch and Lawrence 2009, The rise of global commodity chains in the third food p. 275). This has resulted in more flexible systems of pro- regime was enabled by the interplay of trade liberalization duction, often based on contracts, extensive shift work, and and the establishment of a new ICT infrastructure during flexible and precarious working conditions for farm work - the dot-com boom of the 1990s, which made possible the ers, with the aim of achieving continuous production and coordination and exchange of information within complex stabilizing constant and reliable supply to the major retailers. global networks. Technological developments in cooling, Global food commodity chains are controlled by large super- preserving and transportation were likewise precondi- markets, which have greatly increased their power compared tions for guaranteeing year-round access to fresh produce to their position in the second food regime and have taken for affluent consumers (McMichael 2009). Mechanization, over certain regulatory functions from state actors, including advances in plant research, the use of chemical inputs and 1 3 644 L. Prause et al. seed modification were the driving technologies of the sec- government agencies, consultancies and multilateral organi- ond food regime, and continue to be so in the third. Further zations. We also included in our database technologies that key technologies in the third food regime include advances were mentioned in academic peer-reviewed articles; this was in biotechnologies, particularly the development of geneti- particularly relevant for those steps in the food commodity cally-modified seeds, which have further increased corporate chain where we found only a few reports published by non- power (Pechlaner and Otero 2008). academic actors (e.g. food packaging). New technologies therefore contribute to shifting power We found 92 studies in total, of which we identified 53 relations between food producers, consumers, states and cor- as relevant for our analysis, all published between 2011 and porate actors, and in conjunction with rules and regulations 2020. Our selection criteria were based on relevance to our play an important role in the organization of food regimes. research question, the report’s quality, and the description What is missing in the literature so far is discussion of a new of digital technologies already on the market. Based on our set of technologies—digital technologies—that are making reports, we identified and categorized 280 services or prod- their way rapidly into the agri-food system in a period where ucts based on digital technologies provided by 197 compa- the third food regime is in transition. To structure our analy- nies, start-ups and public and governmental institutions that sis of digital technologies, we distinguished the following are being applied across the entire food commodity chain. steps within a food commodity chain (following Lang and We do not claim to provide a comprehensive overview of Wiggins 1985): the production of agricultural inputs, includ- all digital technology products that are currently used in the ing fertilizers, pesticides and plant breeding, including GMO agri-food system. Rather, our aim is to give an overview of seeds; the farming process, including irrigation and crop some of the key technologies that are currently being applied growing; the trade of raw agricultural produce; food process- and to discuss their impacts for the third food regime. For ing, where raw agricultural products are manufactured into our analysis, we first sorted the digital products according to finished food products, as a basic or highly processed com- their place in the food commodity chain. We then researched modity; food packaging; transport and storage; and finally the product and the company offering it online. Based on food retail and consumption, which includes major super- this search, we categorized the companies according to their markets and smaller independent traders selling produce sector and size, and researched the main investors where directly to end consumers. applicable. We also added additional information on the types of agriculture that these technologies were developed for and the narratives used by corporate actors. Finally, we Methodology added additional information on the purpose and function of the products and services to build clusters that grouped Academic literature has largely neglected the digitaliza- together a range of products based on digital technologies tion of the agri-food system beyond the farming sector, and that offer a similar kind of service to the farmer/consumer/ peer-reviewed articles often only provide a few examples of food processor etc., even though they might differ in their concrete digital technologies. In order to gain an overview respective functions. of important technological developments, we based our data corpus on reports mainly compiled by non-academic insti- tutions and on an extensive online search of the websites of agri-food companies that sell digital technologies. We gathered our data between February and April 2020, using Google, Google Scholar and Scopus as our prime search After our preliminary search, we were missing reports by NGOs engines. Our aim was to include reports by a wide diversity and political institutions, so we searched specifically for reports by of actors to gain a comprehensive overview of the digital NGOs active in the agrarian sector. We looked at the websites of technologies applied in the agri-food system. We there- GRAIN, Oakland Institute, Friends of the Earth, the Transnational fore included studies issued by corporate actors, NGOs, Institute, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT), the International Union of Food and Tour- ism (IUF), ILO and FAO. We also noted that some of the reports had a regional focus. Furthermore, as our initial search did not cover all world regions, we conducted another search based on the terms ‘digi- tal’ AND ‘food,’ and ‘digital’ AND ‘agriculture’ AND ‘Latin Amer- Search words were ‘agriculture,’ ‘farming,’ ‘food processing,’ ‘food ica,’ ‘Brazil,’ ‘Mexico,’ ‘USA,’ ‘Canada’ on Google, Google Scholar trade,’ ‘food transport,’ ‘food packaging,’ ‘food retail’ and ‘food con- and SCOPUS. sumption,’ which were combined with ‘digital.’ We also included the combinations ‘food’ AND ‘industry 4.0’ and ‘e-commerce’ AND These reports and articles, as well as the search terms used to iden- ‘food.’ The selection of our search terms might have missed contri- tify them, were only used for identifying specific technologies and butions that do not refer to digital technologies as such but to more building our empirical database. A wider variety of peer-reviewed specific aspects of digitalization, for example (big) data. articles was used for theoretical and analytical purposes. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 645 Table 1 Digital technologies along the food commodity chain Step in food commodity chain Key digital product or service Key actors and example companies Agricultural inputs Fintech for credit evaluation and payment services Start-ups (e.g. Advans Group); non-profit start-ups (e.g. One Acre Fund) Data-based insurances Agriculture insurance companies (e.g. AIG Crop Risk Services) Genome-edited seeds Start-ups (e.g. Calyxt); agro-chemical corporations (e.g. DowDuPont) Farm operations Precision agriculture equipment Start-ups (e.g. Blue River Technology); agro-machine and equipment companies (e.g. John Deere); agro- chemical companies (e.g. Yara International) Farm robotics Start-ups (e.g. Naio Technologies) Digital machine-sharing platforms Start-ups (e.g. Tro Tro Tractor); agro-machine and equipment companies (e.g. Tractors and Farm Equip- ment Limited) Data-based agronomy advice and information Start-ups (e.g. Indigo Ag); social start-ups (e.g. Green Dreams Tech); agro-chemical companies (e.g. Bayer Crop Science); public institutions (e.g. FAO) Farm management platforms Agro-chemical companies (e.g. Syngenta); agro- machine and equipment companies (e.g. John Deere); start-ups (e.g. CropX) Primary commodity trade Digital marketplaces Start-ups (e.g. Indigo Ag); multinational tech com- panies (e.g. Alibaba); multinational food trading corporations (e.g. Cargill) Food processing Collaborative robotics Food processing companies (e.g. Nestlé) 3D food printing Food processing companies (e.g. Choc Edge) Packaging Smart packaging Tech companies (e.g. Adobe Inc) 3D printing for polymer-based materials Tech companies (e.g. MakerBot Industries, LLC) Transport Quality sensors and analytics Logistics companies (e.g. Purfresh); tech companies (e.g. Tellspec) Digital freight management Multinational food trading companies (e.g. Cargill) Digital transport logistics for small-scale producers Farmer organizations (e.g. Zambia National Farmers’ Union); start-ups (e.g. Distrego) Storage Automated warehouses Supermarkets (e.g. Ocado); food processing companies (e.g. Nestlé) Retail and consumption Smart shopping Supermarkets (e.g. Carrefour); tech companies (e.g. Amazon) E-commerce platforms Tech companies (e.g. Alibaba); supermarkets (e.g. Wholefoods Market) Entire commodity chain Digital tools for commodity chain traceability and Supermarkets (e.g. Carrefour); tech companies (e.g. transparency Amazon); farmer organizations (e.g. Ugandan National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises); food processors (e.g. Nestlé); food com- modity traders (e.g. Louis Dreyfus) technologies (fintech). While most of these genome-edited Digital technologies along the food seeds have not yet been commercialized, large agro-chemical commodity chain companies are currently racing to secure the patents (Then 2019: 11). Fintech companies rely on a wide range of social Our empirical research shows that digital technologies are and environmental data to determine smallholder farmers’ now used along every step of the food commodity chain. creditworthiness and to administer insurance services. At Table 1 summarizes the most important clusters of digital the farm level, precision-agriculture equipment, robotics, products and services that we found. agronomy advice and information—such as weather apps or The two most significant digital developments taking weed identification apps—and farm management platforms place at the input level are genome-edited seeds, using for make up the main digital developments. These products are example Crispr/Cas9, and the use of innovative financial 1 3 646 L. Prause et al. often sold with the promise of offering a more precise use sections, we analyze how the different technologies we iden- of inputs, reducing the required labor and producing higher tified, as well as the increased dependency on data, shape yields, and are based on the use of big data analysis and key features of the third food regime. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) (see also Klerkx and Rose 2020; Lezoche ‘Supermarketization,’ green narratives and tech et al. 2020). Farm management platforms in particular have companies attracted investment from large agri-food companies. Digitalization is also taking place in food commodity Supermarkets have become key actors in the control of trading, processing and storage. A range of digital market- global food commodity chains in the third food regime. place platforms, mostly developed by start-ups, are offering They have taken over regulatory and norm-setting func- to bring farmers and buyers, or input suppliers and farmers, tions regarding standards for high-quality and high-value together. These marketplaces aim to minimize the role of foods such as fresh produce, and more recently also for low- middlemen, and/or differentiate the commodity market as value foods such as corn and soy, that were previously per- a source of new value creation (Mitchell 2019). At the food formed by national governments (Burch and Lawrence 2009; processing level, the main trend in emerging digital tech- Freidberg 2020). Digitalization does not alter the existing nologies involves automation or robotics, such as optical basic principles of traceability and quality standards, but systems that automatically sort fruits and vegetables, and IoT it is advancing them through new tools that allow for more technologies such as collaborative robots that communicate precise product tracing. For instance, food commodities with one another (Nestlé 2019). Some companies are also are often sold in bulk, making them hard to trace beyond experimenting with smart packaging, computer-aided auto- their wider region of origin, unless the retailer is directly mation and 3D printing (Vanderroost et al. 2017). In food involved in production. Digital supply chains make it pos- transportation, different types of quality sensors and analyt- sible to record and store precise information regarding the ics allow for greater control over the condition of the food harvest date for a specific fruit, the location and owner of being transported or stored in order to decrease food safety the plot, when it was packed and how long it took to trans- risks, increase transparency and avoid losses through spoil- port to Europe (Thomasson 2019). Such technologies might ing. In the food storage sector, we observed the emergence provide some degree of transparency for end consumers; of automated warehouses (see also Fraser 2019). however, they also allow for increased data and informa- Further downstream in the commodity chain, our data tion extraction by corporations and might have exclusion- analysis showed three main digital trends for the retail and ary effects for some farmers. If a farmer’s products are consumption sector: the use of data to enhance the trace- considered sub-standard, for instance, they can be targeted ability and transparency of the food commodity chain; smart as individuals rather than as part of a cooperative or larger shopping; and a wide variety of e-commerce platforms oe ff r - farming community. Cargill, one of the largest international ing groceries online. Several large retailers (e.g. Walmart, food traders, uses GPS mapping to obtain detailed informa- Carrefour) are experimenting with digital technologies tion about farm location, size, cultivation methods, as well to trace the supply chains of specific products and make as farmers’ choices about fertilizers and replanting activities, them transparent to the consumer via digital ‘passports,’ or “along with a wealth of information about farming families through blockchain technologies and QR codes. Some of and communities” (Cargill n.d.). Such information allows these technologies also allow retailers to collect consumer food retailers to market their commodities to consumers as data and thus to forecast product-ordering levels and gen- being both ‘safe’ and ‘green,’ and represents a continuation erate individually-customized offers or individual pricing, of the corporate-environmental repositioning that began in thereby influencing consumer behavior (see also Carolan the second food regime. 2018). We also observed large multinational tech companies In the context of digitalization, the environmental narra- like Amazon and Alibaba moving into online food retail and tive also serves a second function, namely to legitimize the offering grocery delivery options. introduction of digital technologies along the global com- Our research suggests that the digital transformation of modity chain. Cargill writes on its website that it uses GPS the food system is largely driven by multinationals from the mapping for more than 56,000 smallholder farms in Côte agri-food and tech sector, as well as private sector start- d’Ivoire, Indonesia and Cameroon “to demonstrate whether ups. The digital technologies developed for this transition a farm location is linked to a deforestation hotspot” as part of differ according to accessibility, the required hardware and their “commitment to eliminating deforestation from [their] infrastructure, the associated costs and the involved actors. cocoa supply chain” (n.d.). The start-up Farmforce claims One common trend in the range of technologies throughout that the purpose of its blockchain technology for commodity the commodity chain is the growing dependence on extract- chain traceability “is to deliver digital solutions to secure ing and analyzing large amounts of data. In the following sustainable sourcing, […] and protect the environment” 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 647 (n.d.). Farm machinery equipment companies and input pro- dominance. In addition to the world’s top grocery retailers ducers claim that digitalization is making their products ‘cli- such as Walmart and Tesco, Amazon and Alibaba have also mate smart’ (Newell and Taylor 2017). Thus, environmental bought into food grocery e-retail (Kumar 2018). With its narratives are legitimizing a digital transition in the food purchase of Whole Foods Market and its use of big data to system that might otherwise raise critical questions about track consumer behavior and preferences, Amazon might issues such as data sovereignty, increased surveillance and become one of the world’s top-10 food retailers (IPES-Food corporate control over farming practices. 2017, p. 45). We thus believe that we are currently witness- Linking ‘sustainability’ to the application of digital tech- ing a shift in corporate power away from the supermarkets nologies also allows corporate actors to gain institutional towards actors in the tech sector, facilitated in part by digital support for their technological developments and to consoli- technologies. date and advance their control over technologies, livelihoods Tech companies are not only active in the retail sector. and food production, while at the same time marginalizing The Chinese company Alibaba, for example, also offers the agro-ecological alternatives in international fora and institu- ET Agricultural Brain, an AI-based tool for enhancing fruit tions (Newell and Taylor 2017). Agri-food corporations have and vegetable planting, while the Alibaba Blockchain Food successfully pushed a ‘climate-smart narrative’ into UN Trust Framework offers blockchain technologies for food institutions such as the FAO. This is mirrored in the recent traceability and transparency. We also found digital technol- announcement by member states of the Global Forum for ogies for data analysis, AI and machine learning developed Food and Agriculture that they will set up an International for agriculture by Microsoft, IBM and SAP. While they do Digital Council for Food and Agriculture under the auspices not yet seem to be threatening the traditional agro-chemical of the FAO. One rationale put forward is the aim to “create and farm machinery companies, tech companies are also a more efficient and equitable global agri-food system that playing an increasingly important role at the downstream would help in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals end of the commodity chain. At the forefront of this move- (SDGs)” (FAO 2020b, p. 2). The EU has also adapted this ment of tech companies into the agri-food sector via digital approach to digital agriculture, stating in a declaration that technologies seem to be US and Chinese companies, with “Digital technologies (…) have the potential to increase farm SAP being a European exception. efficiency while improving economic and environmental sustainability” (European Commission 2019). At the same Financialization time, the EU announced its financial support for the sector through funding for research and development and the estab- Several definitions of the third food regime see not only lishment of “a Europe-wide innovation infrastructure for a supermarketization but also financialization as its defining smart European agri-food sector and a European dataspace feature (e.g. McMichael 2009; Burch and Lawrence 2009). for smart agri-food applications” (FAO 2020b, p. 2). These authors argue that the third food regime reflects the Digital supply chains seem to stabilize rather than chal- overall characteristics of neoliberal capitalism, in that finan- lenge retailers’ control over global commodity chains. At the cial institutions and instruments are increasingly involved same time, we observe a shift within the retail sector, largely along the agri-food commodity chain. We believe this is facilitated by digital technologies, that might threaten the also true in the area of digitalization. Not only have invest- market dominance of traditional supermarkets and contrib- ment companies been instrumental in some of the biggest ute to the transitional forces within the third food regime. mergers in the agri-food system, such as the acquisition of Capital from the tech sector is increasingly invested in the Whole Foods Market by Amazon, but financial investment retail sector and is starting to take over market shares. Until companies also own a growing number of shares in large recently, large supermarket chains relied on established agri-food companies that control key digital technologies in oligopolies in many countries and very little competition. the food commodity chain, such as farm management plat- In the US in 2015, the four largest retailers accounted for forms (Dörr 2018). about 40% of national grocery sales, while in the European Since the 2008 financial crisis, the agri-food sector Union in 2011, the top-five retailers in 13 member states has become an attractive and relatively secure investment accounted for about 60% (IPES-Food 2017, p. 45). With option for financial capital (Burch and Lawrence 2009). In regard to the investors, the concentration is even higher, with 2019, for example, BlackRock held shares in many major only five big asset managers (among them BlackRock and agri-food businesses, amongst them 7.2 percent of voting Vanguard) owning a large portion of company shares in the rights for Bayer-Monsanto and 6.3 percent ownership of retail sector (ETC Group 2019). Spurred by the opportu- Corteva Agriscience, a subsidiary of DowDuPont (Jessop nities of digitalization, several large tech companies have and Burger 2019), therefore wielding increasing market moved into the retail sector to provide e-commerce services power in the sector (ETC Group 2019). Financial investors for groceries, thereby weakening supermarket chains’ market have also been a driving force behind the establishment of 1 3 648 L. Prause et al. many of the start-ups offering digital technologies. In our Corporate power and the ‘data grab’ analysis, we found 57 start-ups offering digital technolo- gies for one or several steps of the food commodity chain. Our data shows that large agri-food and tech corporations Many of these start-ups lack a clear profitability model, are by now controlling many of the key digital technolo- relying instead on investment money in their attempt to gies along the food commodity chain. At the input level, capture market shares (PA Consulting 2018). The start- we observe the traditional big players of the seed markets, up Indigo Agriculture, for example, had raised a total of Bayer, DowDuPont and Syngenta, taking control of new $850 million by the end of January 2020 from corporate genome editing technologies. DowDuPont holds the highest investors such as FedEx and Activant Capital, as well as number of patents on these new technologies and is thus able public investment funds such as Investment Corporation to offer bundled, non-exclusive licenses to a patent pool— of Dubai and Alaska Permanent Fund (Somerville 2017; resulting in considerable market control and power. DowDu- Indigo Agriculture 2020, 2017). Pont currently also leads in international patent applications Traditional agri-food companies are also building up (filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization) in capital venture arms that invest directly in digital agri- the field of genome editing; Bayer follows in second place cultural start-ups. Many of the established multinational before Calyxt, which is marketing the first soybean modified companies in the food system, such as Syngenta, Bayer, using new genetic engineering techniques. Also included John Deere and Cargill, keep track of promising new digi- are Syngenta and BASF, while a few patents have also been tal innovations by collaborating with, or establishing their filed by traditional breeding companies such as KWS (Then own, start-up incubators and accelerators, which connect 2019; Cameron 2017). start-ups or university-based research groups with ven- Beyond such ‘traditional’ forms of corporate control ture capital firms and corporations, to assist in bringing through intellectual property rights, we believe that digi- technological innovations to the market and allowing the talization also allows for new forms of corporate control agri-food multinationals to invest in or absorb promising through the collection and privatization of big data. Big data technologies at an early stage. For example, Blue River refers to large flows and stores of data that are generated Technologies, a company that uses AI to automatically continuously with the aim of being exhaustive and fine- identify and spray herbicide on weeds, was initially funded grained in scope, and flexible and scalable in production by Syngenta’s venture capital arm and later bought by (Kitchin 2014, p. 2). A central node for the collection of John Deere in 2017. As such, it is not simply that finan- data are farm management platforms that collect data points cial investors are expanding into the agri-food sector, but from individual farms. In order to gain access to the benefits that established companies in the sector are themselves of the technology, farmers have to reveal their agricultural increasingly adopting the logic of finance capital (see also knowledge about soil fertility and crops, as well as personal Burch and Lawrence 2009 for the retail sector). farm details. Monsanto’s FieldScript program, for example, A very different aspect of financialization touches requires two years of farm data on yields, soil quality and upon smallholder agriculture and the involvement of new field mapping before the farmer can access any beneficial actors in evaluating creditworthiness. We found a range services (Schimpf 2020). Farm management platforms often of fintech start-ups that base their services on the extrac- offer multi-tiered service packages, sometimes with a free tion and analysis of data. The start-ups Farmdrive and basic version designed to attract a critical number of users Advans both use digital technologies to assess farmers’ to capture market shares. Farm management platforms, like creditworthiness based on psychometric data as well as other digital platforms, create lock-in effects for their users, farm operations and environmental data. Both companies so that while the costs of using the platform are low or nil, claim that this digitalization of financial services will help the costs of switching to a different provider are high (for historically disenfranchised smallholder farmers to access example, due to the incompatibility of data formats). financial services. Rather than being solutions for ‘finan- In using most of the platforms we analyzed, individual cial inclusivity’ for disenfranchised populations, however, farmers hand over control of their data to the company. If research suggests that these new systems of credit scoring they can access their own data at all (many platforms do have stratifying and disciplinary tendencies (Fourcade and not disclose their back-end processes and data to customers, Healy 2017; Roderick 2014), and can contribute to differ - including information about how customers’ data is used ent neoliberal or authoritarian forms of ‘algorithmic gov- and for what purposes), they often lack the tools and capaci- ernance’ (Gruin 2019). They also rely on already estab- ties to analyze it. It is thus corporations that are benefit- lished financial infrastructures that continue to reproduce, ing from big data collection and analysis (Carbonell 2016), or even deepen, global inequalities (Bernards 2019). As leading Fraser (2019) to talk about the privatization of data such, these data-driven financial technologies perpetuate and a ‘data grab’ in digital agriculture. This is made pos- existing systems of control. sible in part through a lack of regulation. In the context of 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 649 digitalization, the law around data and privacy becomes an the large companies in the sector attribute to this digital important aspect of agricultural regulation. Recent attempts product, and how, according to Monsanto’s chief technology by the US Farm Bureau to ensure the security, ownership officer Robb Fraley, “the information itself becomes the big and protection of farmers’ data when they use farm man- business” in agriculture (McDonnell 2014). agement platforms have been undermined by corporations. Corporate control over the agri-food system is thus Bayer, for example, adjusted its End User License Agree- increasingly tied up with control over big data, which offers ment for its platform to ensure that it retains control of farm- agri-food companies the opportunity to use data to enhance ers’ data for further use (Schimpf 2020). The absence of their own products, to bind farmers more closely to the com- stricter rules currently adds to data-based corporate control panies’ products, and to extract value from selling aggre- in the agri-food system. gated data and possibly gaining political influence. The privatization of data through farm management plat- forms offers companies several possibilities to create value. Labor and production Input providers such as Syngenta are linking their traditional products, like seeds and pesticides, ever more closely to the Farm management platforms also have the potential to (re-) farm management services they offer. Syngenta has invested shape the relationship between farm owners and farm work- heavily in the takeovers of farm management platforms in ers. Digital technologies can foster a labor model, dubbed the past five years, and claims to be the only company with ‘digital Taylorism’ or ‘Neo-Taylorism,’ that comprises access to the leading farm management platforms in the new modes of workplace surveillance, control and worker world’s top four agriculture markets: the US, Brazil, China deskilling, as well as of measurement, standardization and and Eastern Europe. Syngenta estimates that around 28 quantification of work (Altenried 2020). This dynamic has million hectares of farmland are managed by its platforms. so far only been identified for other economic sectors, how - However, Syngenta’s chief information and digital officer ever we believe that farm management platforms offer the explained in an interview that Syngenta does not believe necessary tools to introduce digital Taylorism to the farm. that it can make money from selling the software to farm- The John Deere Operation Center, for example, offers a ers; instead, the company sees farm management platforms detailed machine location history, semi-standardized com- as accompanying its core products in crop protection and munication with operators and detailed ‘performance’ analy- seeds (Rana 2020). Thus, Syngenta is using the data it col- sis, including live performance tracking of different fields, lects to optimize its products and gain an advantage over its which allow for the comprehensive surveillance of farm competitors. Simultaneously, it is creating further lock-in machinery operators as well as a further standardization of effects for farmers, such as when Syngenta inputs no longer their tasks. Furthermore, farm management platforms offer work without the platform and vice-versa, or when platforms several services that might lead to a deskilling of both farm provide strong incentives to grow a particular crop to which workers and farmers themselves, such as decision-support the technology is best adapted (see also Carolan 2020). systems and agronomic advice (see also Carolan 2020), as The collection of data through farm management plat- well as guidance and steering systems that automate many forms also offers the opportunity to compile a large aggre- of the processes and decisions that farm machinery operators gated data set on farming that might be sold to different farm previously made autonomously. We found several start-ups input suppliers, agronomists and machinery firms, but also offering agronomic advice, such as pest diagnosis and phe- to national and international agricultural political institu- notyping, targeted at small-scale farmers via low-tech ICT tions. Start-ups like SatSure or MyCrop offer policy con- such as mobile phones and simple apps. This could lead sultancy based on the farm data they collect. Thus, the ‘data to a further marginalization of the cultural and ecological grab’ might not just influence company-farmer relations, but knowledge of small-scale farmers, when their knowledge could also have an influence on policy-making. is replaced by data analytics and/or AI. However, while our Our data shows that all of the large agro-chemical and data shows that farm management platforms and other data- agro-machinery companies have taken over or developed at based agronomic services could possibly alter agricultural least one farm management platform. Next to Syngenta and labor and knowledge, whether this is the case, and at what its four platforms, Bayer is an important player through its scale, requires further empirical investigation. ownership of Climate Field View, which in 2018 had more Debates on the third food regime tend to focus solely on than 100,000 registered clients in the US, Canada and Bra- farm labor. What our analysis shows, however, is that digi- zil, who together farm about 120 million acres (Carbonell talization is also very likely to change labor in other sections 2016; McDonnell 2014). Climate Field View is compatible of the commodity chain. Amazon’s ambitions, for example, with the farm management tools offered by John Deere and to establish cashier-free stores may change the labor mar- AGCO. CLAAS as well as BASF and Corteva Agriscience ket in the retail sector, whereby jobs are lost and supermar- also own such platforms. This indicates the importance that ket labor restructured, possibly exacerbating intersectional 1 3 650 L. Prause et al. inequalities by disproportionately affecting low-skilled be difficult for smaller producers to pay for certification or workers and women. Automated, networked and roboticized access the required technological tools. warehouses like those of Ocado, combined with increased Nevertheless, digital technologies are not necessarily det- e-commerce and grocery delivery, seem to suggest that labor rimental for small-scale agriculture. Some companies are in food storage and logistics facilities might be taking on developing digital products tailored to the needs of agro- characteristics of the digital Taylorist working conditions ecological farmers. In East Africa, the start-up WeFarm that are already established in Amazon warehouses. claims to have set up the largest farmer-to-farmer digital net- Regarding agricultural production, we believe that digiti- work, with more than 1 million users in Kenya and Uganda. zation will deepen existing tendencies towards an increased WeFarm allows farmers to share questions, information gap in terms of profitability between small- and large-scale and advice, and might thus strengthen local agricultural agriculture. From the 137 products that we found for the knowledge rather than marginalize it. The German-based input and farm levels, most were developed for large-scale company Rucola Soft offers a planning tool for vegetable industrial farming, such as guidance systems, (semi-)autono- cultivation customized to the needs of community supported mous tractors and harvest robots. The latter are intended to agriculture. The freeware and open source solution FarmOS decrease the need for farm labor even further, while increas- is designed for and can benefit smallholders. Several other ing the productivity of large-scale farms (e.g. Harvest Croo similar solutions, such as AgXChange, IsoBlue, FarmLogs, Robotics 2020). the OpenAg Data Alliance and the Open Food Network, Our findings also indicate that the use of digital tech- enable farmers to stay independent of large corporations and nologies at the farm level might be driven by a partial re- to regain or maintain data sovereignty in deciding how their regulation of agriculture and food production that we are data is shared (Carbonell 2016; Fraser 2019). Moreover, dig- currently witnessing as part of the transitional tendencies ital infrastructures have the potential to facilitate trans-local of the third food regime. China, for example, amended its food movements and the sharing of place-based knowledge food safety laws in 2015 and established a new food safety for the benefit of farmers and food sovereignty groups (Santo administration (Kuhlmann et al 2019). Germany has passed and Moragues-Faus 2019). new regulations regarding the use of fertilizers in order to While digital technologies that are developed for and ide- comply with the European Commission’s requirements on ally with the help of small-scale farmers might bring some groundwater quality. In 2019, the European Court of Justice improvements for family farmers, our analysis suggests that classified new genome editing techniques as conventional digitalization does not signal a general departure from the genetic engineering, in order to ensure food safety and the large-scale industrialized and fossil fuel-dependent agricul- protection of human health and the environment, in line tural model characteristic of the third food regime. Even with the precautionary principle (Andersen and Schreiber though agriculture is responsible for 20% of global green- 2020). Furthermore, social movements have in the past years house gas emissions (FAO 2020a) and has become a focal strategically mobilized against bi- or multilateral free trade point of international political regulation around the climate agreements, which in light of the malaise of the WTO have crisis, it is unlikely that digitalization will bring about a become an even more important feature of international more sustainable model of agriculture. trade, in order to demand the integration of social, environ- mental and safety standards, particularly with regard to food imports. Such demands have, for example, been partially Conclusion incorporated into the recent proposal for the EU-Mercosur trade agreement (Ghiotto and Echaide 2019). Our analysis has shown that the digitalization of food In this context of an attempted (if still partial) re-reg- production is a phenomenon along the entire commodity ulation of the farming sector and aspects of international chain. To understand the impacts of digitalization on the food trade, digital technologies, particularly farm man- organization of the agri-food system, we believe it is cru- agement platforms and digital supply chain technologies, cial to overcome the current debate’s tendency to focus on might become an important tool for farmers to generate digitalization at the input and farm level. One reason why proof that they have complied with regulatory frameworks. such a broader approach is largely missing might be that Such features are already provided by a number of digi- digitalization along the food commodity chain seems to be tal service providers, for example the platform 365Farm. discussed under different terms and in different strands of net by CLAAS, and organizations such as the OECD are the literature. Genome editing is generally discussed as bio- pushing for the digitalization of border agencies and cer- technology; automation, robotics, IoT, AI and digitalization tification mechanisms to facilitate international food trade in the food processing and packaging sector are referred (Jouanjean 2019). This might result in the further exclusion to as industry 4.0; while similar technologies at the farm of small-scale producers from certain markets, since it could level are referred to as smart farming or agriculture 4.0. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 651 Bringing these three strands of the literature together might – a trend that might be reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic. be a first step in furthering inquiries into the future of food Digitalization seems to facilitate the stronger participation of production. tech companies in the agri-food system in general. Many of Using the third food regime as our analytical lens shows the large tech firms such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba that claims about a new revolution in agriculture and food are now offering products at other stages in the food com- production are exaggerated. If we look at the organizing modity chain. Our data shows that Chinese tech companies principles of the third food regime, we can see that many in particular are emerging as important actors in the agri- have been kept in place. Supermarkets are intensifying their food system. The importance of China in the transition of control over food producers and commodity chains, for the third food regime has been noted elsewhere (McMichael instance via digital supply chain technologies. Green nar- 2019; Belesky and Lawrence 2018), yet the growing involve- ratives are still used by retailers to market their products, ment and power of Chinese tech companies has so far gone and they are now supported through, and used to legitimize, largely unnoticed. digital technologies, by stressing their alleged contribu- In terms of labor and production, we found that the flex- tion to environmental sustainability across the commodity ible and precarious conditions of labor typical of the third chain, not least as a selling point to attract consumers. This food regime might be deepened if robotics reduce the need focus on environmental sustainability constitutes a residual for farm laborers and, as such, their bargaining power and feature of the third food regime, yet it is increasingly com- political support (see also Carolan 2019). Our data also sug- bined with a focus on digital technologies in the notion of gests that digital technologies might enable new forms of ‘climate-smart agriculture.’ Financialization has been dis- digital Taylorism on the fields and in greenhouses and food cussed as another key trait of the third food regime. Finan- storage by increasing surveillance and new forms of work cial investors are driving the development of many digital standardization, as well as farmers’ reliance on data-based technologies through large investments in digital agriculture advice. This might lead to a deskilling of (farm) laborers and start-ups. Furthermore, financial capital facilitates vertical a loss of agricultural and ecological knowledge. integration and mergers, and the takeover by large agri-food In a context where the neoliberal paradigm of the third and tech companies of smaller companies offering digital food regime is fragmenting, we are currently witnessing the technologies such as farm management platforms. Finally, start of a re-regulation of the agriculture and food sector, agri-food companies are increasingly adopting the logic particularly in the EU, due to concerns over the climate cri- of finance capital to establish venture capital arms of their sis and food safety. Standards and regulations might become own to invest in promising start-ups. We therefore found a further driver of digitalization: if farmers and food traders that the close ties between financialization and corporate have to prove their compliance with complex national or control over food production also hold true for the develop- EU policies and bi- and multilateral trade agreements, digi- ment and use of new digital technologies. As our analysis tal technologies might become a prerequisite to provide the shows, big tech and major agri-food companies dominate the necessary information. technologies along the entire food commodity chain, from Finally, we identified a new tendency for data to be used intellectual property rights for a new generation of GMO by agri-food companies to generate value and increase con- seeds, through farm management platforms, to the estab- trol over farmers. As Fraser (2019) states, land grabs are now lishment of automated warehouses and consumption solu- accompanied by data grabs, when companies collect and use tions. Thus, there is very little to indicate that digitalization large amounts of previously proprietary, private or unused will bring about profound changes in the dominant model of agricultural data through farm management platforms, food production or the functioning and distribution of profits digital marketplaces and digital supply chain technologies. along global commodity chains. Since many of the digital More democratic alternatives such as open source platforms technologies we analyzed were capital-intensive and often remain marginalized, not least because they lack capital to targeted at large-scale agriculture, we believe furthermore fully compete with proprietary systems. that the opposition between small-scale agro-ecological Based on the digital technologies we analyzed in this farming and large-scale industrial farming will be fortified article, we see digitalization as taking on a twofold role in by digitalization. the current food regime. On the one hand, we believe that Our analysis does, however, show that digital technolo- digitalization is deepening some of the existing and still gies are contributing to certain transitions of the third food relatively stable characteristics of the third food regime. As regime. At the retail end, we see tech companies increas- a continuation of the importance of ICTs, which enabled ingly moving into the sector based on digital technologies global commodity chains in the first place, digitalization such as e-commerce platforms and GPS for delivery logis- allows for even stronger control by the retail sector over food tics. This is transforming the retail market, as e-commerce production and consumption (even as traditional supermar- provides an important alternative to traditional supermarkets kets face growing competition from internet-based tech 1 3 652 L. Prause et al. and Karina Rosenthal for their support of the data collection and Zoe companies) and increased efficiency along the chain. On the Goldstein for her excellent language edits. other hand, we believe that digital technologies also add to the transitional tendencies of the regime. We understand the Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt incorporation of digital technologies into the agri-food sec- DEAL. This work was supported by the BMBF as part of the funding tor as part of a broader restructuring towards ‘digital capital- line ‘Bioeconomy as Societal Change’ FKZ 031B0750. ism,’ which Staab (2019, p. 43) argues is characterized by Data availability Data collection for this article was conducted by the a system of proprietary markets and the commodification three authors of this paper through the review of reports and online of data that is about to replace the neoliberal free market research on agri-food companies. An overview of the reports analyzed paradigm. We see agri-food companies increasingly attempt- for this paper is included as supplementary material. ing to establish such business models alongside their tradi- tional strategies. This is evidenced in the fierce competition Compliance with ethical standards to attract users to farm management platforms and online marketplaces, and to establish a monopoly over the ‘market’ Conflict of interests The authors have no conflicts of interest to de- clare. of farmers and the buyers of agricultural products. Agri-food companies have started to extract value from the data they collect and to use digital technologies to lock-in farmers into their own product ecosystems (e.g. through farm inputs or machinery), without facing effective government regulation regarding the protection of farmers’ data. Furthermore, digi- tal tech companies are moving into the agri-food sector. At a Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- stage of capitalist development where large tech companies bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta- like Amazon and Google are the most profitable and power - tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, ful corporate entities, and digital tech capital is becoming provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes ever more important, it is only logical that these actors are were made. The images or other third party material in this article are also increasingly shaping the production and consumption included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated of food. Finally, going ‘digital’ or ‘smart’ is becoming a otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not hegemonic model of economic and social development, in permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will the agri-food system and beyond (Srnicek 2017). This nar- need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a rative, when combined with the ‘green’ imperative identified copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. by Friedmann (2005), has led to the notion of ‘climate-smart agriculture.’ This logic has been internalized by state actors and multilateral institutions, who legitimize their financial References and political support for digital developments along the food commodity chain by citing environmental, climate and food Altenried, M. 2020. The platform as factory: Crowdwork and the hid- safety issues. This poses an important challenge to the con- den labour behind artificial intelligence. Capital & Class 44 (2): cept of agro-ecology favored by peasant movements around 145–158. https ://doi.org/10.1177/03098 16819 89941 0. the globe (Newell and Taylor 2017). Andersen, E., and K. Schreiber. 2020. “Genome Editing” vor dem EuGH und seine Folgen. NuR (Natur und Recht) 42: 99–106. Finally, our research suggests that questions of data sov- Belesky, P., and G. Lawrence. 2018. Chinese state capitalism and ereignty versus data privatization might become a site of neomercantilism in the contemporary food regime: Contradic- political tension in the transition of the third food regime tions, continuity and change. The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 due to the growing role of data throughout the food com- (6): 1119–1141. https://doi.or g/10.1080/03066150.2018.14502 42 . Bernards, N. 2019. The poverty of fintech? Psychometrics, credit modity chain. While this has not been our main focus, future infrastructures, and the limits of financialization. Review of research should pay close attention to the challenges and International Political Economy 26 (5): 815–838. https ://doi. opportunities of the digitalization of the agri-food sector org/10.1080/09692 290.2019.15977 53. for peasant movements, as well as to the development of Bernstein, H. 2015. Food regimes and food regime analysis: A selective survey. Paper presented at the land grabbing, conflict and agrar - digital alternatives, such as software products developed ian‐environmental transformations: Perspectives from East and specifically for agro-ecological farming and digital farming Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai University. communities, as well as those designed around the concepts Bronson, K., and I. Knezevic. 2016. Big Data in food and agriculture. of open source access and data sovereignty. Big Data & Society 3 (1): 1–5. https ://doi.org/10.1177/20539 51716 64817 4. Acknowledgements We thank Miriam Boyer, Franziska Kusche und Burch, D., and G. Lawrence. 2009. Towards a third food regime: Camila Moreno for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also Behind the transformation. Agriculture and Human Values 26: thank Friederike Engelbrecht-Bock, Alonso Ignacio Gonzalez Marentis 267–279. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1046 0-009-9219-4. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 653 Cameron, D. 2017. DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to Friedland, W. 1984. Commodity systems analysis: An approach to the enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Insti- sociology of agriculture. Research in Rural Sociology and Devel- tute. www.broad insti tute.org. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. opment 1: 221–235. Carbonell, I.M. 2016. The ethics of big data in big agriculture. Internet Friedland, W. 2001. Reprise on commodity system methodology. Policy Review 5 (1): 1–13. https ://doi.org/10.14763 /2016.1.405. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 9 Cargill. n.d. GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. (1): 82–102. Cargill. https ://www.cargi ll.com/susta inabi lity/cocoa /gps-mappi Friedmann, H. 1991. Changes in the international division of labor: ng. Accessed 18 June 2020. Agri-food complexes and export agriculture. In Towards a New Carolan, M. 2018. Big data and food retail: Nudging out citizens by Political Economy of Agriculture, ed. W. Friedland, L. Busch, F. creating dependent consumers. Geoforum 90: 142–150. https :// Buttel, and A. Rudy, 65–93. Boulder: Westview Press. doi.org/10.1016/j.geofo rum.2018.02.006. Friedmann, H. 2005. From colonialism to green capitalism: Social Carolan, M. 2019. Automated agrifood futures: Robotics, labor and movements and emergence of food regimes. In New Directions the distributive politics of digital agriculture. The Journal of in the Sociology of Global Development, ed. F. Buttel and P. Peasant Studies 47 (1): 184–207. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 McMichael, 227–264. UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 150.2019.15841 89. Friedmann, H., and P. McMichael. 1989. Agriculture and the state Carolan, M. 2020. Acting like an algorithm: Digital farming plat- system: The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to forms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in. Agriculture the present. Sociologia Ruralis 29 (2): 93–117. https ://doi. and Human Values. https://doi.or g/10.1007/s10460-020-10032 -w .org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb003 60.x. Dixon, J. 1999. A cultural economy model for studying food sys- Ghiotto, L. and J. Echaide. 2019. Analysis of the agreement between tems. Agriculture and Human Values 16: 151–160. https ://doi. the European Union and the Mercosur. Berlin, Buenos Aires, org/10.1023/A:10075 31129 846. Brussels: The Greens/EFA and PowerShift. https ://www.annac Dörr, F. 2018. Food regimes, corporate concentration and its implica- a vazz ini.eu/wp-conte nt/uploa ds/2020/01/Summa r y-EU-Mer co tions for decent work. In Decent Work Deficits in Southern Agri-sur-Luciana-Ghio tt o-Javier -Echaide.pdf . Accessed 14 Sept 2020. culture: Measurements, Drivers and Strategies, ed. C. Scherrer Gruin, J. 2019. Financializing authoritarian capitalism: Chinese and S. Verma, 178–208. Augsburg, München: Rainer Hampp fintech and the institutional foundations of algorithmic gov - Verlag. er nance. Finance and Society 5 (2): 84–104. https ://doi. ETC Group. 2019. Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big org/10.2218/finso c.v5i2.4135. food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings Harvest Croo Robotics. 2020. Why Harvest CROO Robotics? https by 2018 revenue. https ://etcgr oup.org/sites /www.etcgr oup.org/://harve stcro o.com/about /#why-autom ation . Accessed 19 June files /files /e tc_plate techt onics _a4_nov20 19_web.pdf. Accessed 2020. 18 June 2020. Indigo Agriculture. 2017. Indigo announces first closing of $156M European Commission. 2019. EU Member States join forces on digi- in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag. talisation for European agriculture and rural areas. https://ec.eur op com. https://www .indigoag.com/pag es/ne ws/indigo-annou nces- a.eu/digit al-singl e-marke t/en/news/eu-membe r-state s-join-force first-closi ng-of-156-m-in-ser ies-d-fundi ng-r ound. A ccessed 19 s-digit alisa tion-europ ean-agric ultur e-and-rural -areas . Accessed June 2020. 18 August 2020. Indigo Agriculture. 2020. Indigo closes $200M financing to support FAO. 2020a. The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emis- continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Mar- sions. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. ketplace and Indigo Carbon. Indigoag.com. https ://www.indig https ://www.fao.org/econo mic/ess/envir onmen t/data/emiss ion-oag.com/pages /news/indig o-close s-200m-finan cing. Accessed share s/en/. Accessed 18 June 2020. 19 June 2020. FAO. 2020b. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the IPES-Food. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega- agri-food system: Proposing a new international digital council for mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food food and agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization sector. www.ipes-food.org. Accessed 18 June 2020. of the United Nations. https://www .fao.org/3/ca7485en/ca748 5en. Jessop, S., and L. Burger. 2019. Top shareholder won’t back pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. Bayer management in AGM vote. Reuters. https ://www.reute Farmforce. n.d. Farmforce in a nutshell. Farmforce.com. https ://farmf rs.com/artic le/us-bayer -share holde r/black rock-will-not-back- orce.com/produ ct/. Accessed 18 June 2020. ba y er -manag ement -in-agm-v o te-sour c es-idUSK CN1RZ 1A8. Fourcade, M., and K. Healy. 2017. Seeing like a market. Socio-Eco- Accessed 18 June 2020. nomic Review 15 (1): 9–29. https://doi.or g/10.1093/ser/mww033 . Jouanjean, M.-A. 2019. Digital opportunities for trade in the agricul- Fraser, A. 2019. Land grab/data grab: Precision agriculture and its new ture and food sectors. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries horizons. The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 (5): 893–912. https Papers. Paris: OECD. https ://doi.org/10.1787/91c40 e07-en ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 150.2017.14158 87. Kitchin, R. 2014. Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Fraser, A. 2020. The digital revolution, data curation, and the new Big Data & Society 1 (1): 1–12. https ://doi.org/10.1177/20539 dynamics of food sovereignty construction. The Journal of 51714 52848 1. Peasant Studies 47 (1): 208–226. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 Klerkx, L., and D. Rose. 2020. Dealing with the game-changing tech- 150.2019.16025 22. nologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and Freidberg, S. 2020. Assembled but unrehearsed: Corporate food power responsibility in food system transition pathways? Global Food and the ‘dance’ of supply chain sustainability. The Journal of Security 24: 100347. https://doi.or g/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.100347 . Peasant Studies 47 (2): 383–400. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 Klerkx, L., E. Jakku, and P. Labarthe. 2019. A review of social sci- 150.2018.15348 35. ence on digital agriculture, smart farming and agriculture 4.0: Friedrich, B., S. Hackfort, M. Boyer, and D. Gottschlich. 2019. Con- New contributions and a future research agenda. NJAS Wage- flicts over GMOs and their contribution to food democracy. Poli- ningen Journal of Life Sciences 90–91: 100315. https ://doi. tics and Governance 7 (4): 165–177. https ://doi.org/10.17645 /org/10.1016/j.njas.2019.10031 5. pag.v7i4.2082. Kuhlmann, K., M. Wand, and Y. Zhou. 2019. Assessment of regu- lation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China’s regime. New Markets 1 3 654 L. Prause et al. Lab. https ://www .syng e nt afo undat ion.or g/sites /g/files /zhg57 Rana, S. 2020. Interview: Syngenta’s digital offerings will effectively 6/f/2019/08/12/assessment _of_r egulation _of_f ood_safety_in_e- accompany its core CP/seed products. Agrow. https://ag row.ag rib comme r ce_-_g loba l_good_r egul at or y _pr act ices_june_2019. usine ssint ellig ence.infor ma.com/AG032 365/Inter vie w-Syng e pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.ntas-digital -offering s-will-effecti vely -accompa ny-its-core-CPsee Kumar, D. 2018. Top e-commerce companies move into retail. d-produ cts. Accessed 18 June 2020. GRAIN. https ://www.grain .org/en/artic le/5957-top-e-comme Roderick, L. 2014. Discipline and power in the digital age: The case of rce-compa nies-move-into-retai l. Accessed 18 June 2020. the US consumer data-broker industry. Critical Sociology 40 (5): Lang, T., and P. Wiggins. 1985. The industrialisation of the U.K. 729–746. https ://doi.org/10.1177/08969 20513 50135 0. food system: From production to consumption. In The Indus- Rotz, S., E. Gravely, I. Mosby, E. Duncan, E. Finnis, M. Horgan, J. trialisation of the Countryside, edited by M. J. Healey, and B. LeBlanc, et al. 2019. Automated pastures and the digital divide: W. Ilbery, 45–56. Norwich: Geobooks. How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural com- Lezoche, M., J.E. Hernandez, M. Del Mar Alemany, H.Panetto Díaz, munities. Journal of Rural Studies 68: 112–122. https ://doi. and J. Kacprzyk. 2020. Agri-food 4.0: A survey of the supply org/10.1016/j.jrurs tud.2019.01.023. chains and technologies for the future agriculture. Computers Santo, R., and A. Moragues-Faus. 2019. Towards a trans-local food in Industry 117: 103187. governance: Exploring the transformative capacity of food policy Magnan, A. 2012. Food regimes. In The Oxford Handbook of Food assemblages in the US and UK. Geoforum 98: 75–87. https://doi. History Online, ed. J.M. Pilcher, 370–389. Oxford: Oxford Uni-org/10.1016/j.geofo rum.2018.10.002. versity Press. Schimpf, M. 2020. Can digital farming really address the systemic McDonnell, T. 2014. Monsanto is using big data to take over the causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or world. Mother Jones. https://www .mot her jones.com/en vironmen will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe. https t/2014/11/monsa nto-big-data-gmo-clima te-chang e/. Accessed ://www.foeeu rope.org/sites /defau lt/files /gmos/2020/foee-digit al- 18 June 2020.farmi ng-paper -feb-2020.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. McMichael, P. 2009. A food regime analysis of the ‘world food cri- Somerville, H. 2017. Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with sis’. Agriculture and Human Values 26 (4): 281–295. https ://doi. help from Dubai fund. Reuters. https ://www.reute rs.com/artic le/ org/10.1007/s1046 0-009-9218-5. us- indig o-f undr a isin g /far mi ng -s t a r t up -indig o- r ais e s- 203-m illi McMichael, P. 2012. The land grab and corporate food regime restruc-on-with-help-from-dubai -fund-idUSK BN1E0 1PK. Accessed 19 turing. The Journal of Peasant Studies 39 (3–4): 681–701. https: // June 2020. doi.org/10.1080/03066 150.2012.66136 9. Srnicek, N. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, Malden: Polity McMichael, P. 2019. Does China’s ‘going out’ strategy prefigure a new Press. food regime? The Journal of Peasant Studies 47 (1): 116–154. Staab, P. 2019. Digitaler Kapitalismus: Markt und Herrschaft in der https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 150.2019.16933 68. Ökonomie der Unknappheit. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Mitchell, C. 2019. How an ag company most people have never heard Then, C. 2019. Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht: Patente- of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Kartell für große Konzerne. In Rundbrief 2, Ed. Forum Umwelt Counter. https://t hecounter .or g/indigo-ag ricultur e-disr up tive-s tart und Entwicklung, 10–13. up/. Accessed 18 June 2020. Thomasson, E. 2019. Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting Mooney, P. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega- sales of some products. Reuters. https ://www.reute rs.com/artic mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food le/us-carre four-block chain /carre four-says-block chain -track ing- sector. IPES-Food. https ://www.ipes-food.org/_img/uploa d/files /boost ing-sales -of-some-produ cts-idUSK CN1T4 2A5. Accessed Conce ntrat ion_FullR eport .pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. 18 June 2020. Nestlé. 2019. Lagebericht. Veyvey: Nestlé. https://www .nestle.de/sites Tilzey, M. 2019. Food regimes, capital, state, and class: Friedmann and /g/files /p ydno a391/files /2020-03/N es tl %C3%A9%2520G lobal McMichael revisited. Sociologia Ruralis 59 (2): 230–254. https:// %2520R eport %25202 019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. doi.org/10.1111/soru.12237. Newell, P., and O. Taylor. 2017. Contested landscapes: The global Trendov, N. M., S. Varas, and M. Zeng. 2019. Digital technologies in political economy of climate-smart agriculture. The Journal of agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agri- Peasant Studies 45 (1): 108–129. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 culture Organization of the United Nations. https://www .fao.org/3/ 150.2017.13244 26.ca498 5en/ca498 5en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. PA Consulting. 2018. Transforming agriculture with data driven Vanderroost, M., P. Ragaert, J. Verwaeren, B. De Meulenaer, B. De insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agr- Baets, and F. Devlieghere. 2017. The digitization of a food pack- itech. London: PA Consulting Group. https ://www .pacon sulti age’s life cycle: Existing and emerging computer systems in the ng.com/insigh ts/2018/digita lagri cultu re/. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. pre-logistics phase. Computers in Industry 87: 1–14. https ://doi. Patel, R. 2013. The long green revolution. The Journal of Peasant Stud-org/10.1016/j.compi nd.2017.02.002. ies 40 (1): 1–63. https://doi.or g/10.1080/03066150.2012.71922 4 . Wolfert, S., L. Ge, C. Verdouw, and M.-J. Bogaardt. 2017. Big data in Pechlaner, G., and G. Otero. 2008. The third food regime: Neolib- smart farming: A review. Agricultural Systems 153: 69–80. https eral globalism and agricultural biotechnology in North Amer- ://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2017.01.023. ica. Sociologia Ruralis 48 (4): 351–371. https ://doi.org/10.111 1/j.1467-9523.2008.00469 .x. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to Prause, L., and P. Le Billon. 2020. Struggles for land: Compar- jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. ing resistance movements against agro-industrial and mining investment projects. The Journal of Peasant Studies. https ://doi. org/10.1080/03066 150.2020.17621 81. Prause, L. 2020. Konflikte um die Aneignung von Land. Proteste gegen Louisa Prause is a post-doctoral researcher at the department of agri- industrielle Minen und agrarindustrielle Projekte im Senegal. cultural economics, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and part of the Wiesbaden: Springer VS. research group Biomaterialities. Her research focuses on the transfor- Pritchard, B. 2009. Food regimes. In International Encyclopedia mation of rural spaces and rural labor relations through digitalization, of Human Geography, ed. R. Kitchin and N. Thrift, 221–225. land conflicts, socio-ecological transformations, social movements and Oxford: Elsevier. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 655 the bioeconomy. Her research takes place in Western Africa, South are new technologies and democracy, politics of food and agriculture, Africa and in Germany. feminist theory and political ecology. Sarah Hackfort is a post-doctoral researcher at Humboldt-Universität Margit Lindgren is a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomaterialities research zu Berlin at the department of agricultural economics. She is lead- group at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She has experi- ing the research group BioMaterialities that analyzes transformations ence in strategic research for trade unions and is currently focusing her in production, reproduction and politics in the unfolding bioeconomy doctoral research on intersectional environmental and labor struggles from a critical social sciences perspective. Her major research interests in the Bioeconomy. 1 3 http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Agriculture and Human Values Springer Journals http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/digitalization-and-the-third-food-regime-NyJqZiW8Kj

Loading next page...

References (103)

Nick Bernards (2019)
The poverty of fintech? Psychometrics, credit infrastructures, and the limits of financialization
Review of International Political Economy, 26
Marie-Agnès Jouanjean (2019)
Digital Opportunities for Trade in the Agriculture and Food Sectors
OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers
Moritz Altenried (2019)
The platform as factory: Crowdwork and the hidden labour behind artificial intelligence
Capital & Class, 44
(European Commission. 2019. EU Member States join forces on digitalisation for European agriculture and rural areas. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/eu-member-states-join-forces-digitalisation-european-agriculture-and-rural-areas. Accessed 18 August 2020.)
European Commission. 2019. EU Member States join forces on digitalisation for European agriculture and rural areas. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/eu-member-states-join-forces-digitalisation-european-agriculture-and-rural-areas. Accessed 18 August 2020.
European Commission. 2019. EU Member States join forces on digitalisation for European agriculture and rural areas. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/eu-member-states-join-forces-digitalisation-european-agriculture-and-rural-areas. Accessed 18 August 2020., European Commission. 2019. EU Member States join forces on digitalisation for European agriculture and rural areas. https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/news/eu-member-states-join-forces-digitalisation-european-agriculture-and-rural-areas. Accessed 18 August 2020.
Louisa Prause (2020)
Konflikte um die Aneignung von Land
(McDonnell, T. 2014. Monsanto is using big data to take over the world. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/monsanto-big-data-gmo-climate-change/. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
McDonnell, T. 2014. Monsanto is using big data to take over the world. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/monsanto-big-data-gmo-climate-change/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
McDonnell, T. 2014. Monsanto is using big data to take over the world. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/monsanto-big-data-gmo-climate-change/. Accessed 18 June 2020., McDonnell, T. 2014. Monsanto is using big data to take over the world. Mother Jones. https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/11/monsanto-big-data-gmo-climate-change/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(Indigo Agriculture. 2017. Indigo announces first closing of $156M in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-announces-first-closing-of-156-m-in-series-d-funding-round. Accessed 19 June 2020.)
Indigo Agriculture. 2017. Indigo announces first closing of $156M in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-announces-first-closing-of-156-m-in-series-d-funding-round. Accessed 19 June 2020.
Indigo Agriculture. 2017. Indigo announces first closing of $156M in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-announces-first-closing-of-156-m-in-series-d-funding-round. Accessed 19 June 2020., Indigo Agriculture. 2017. Indigo announces first closing of $156M in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-announces-first-closing-of-156-m-in-series-d-funding-round. Accessed 19 June 2020.
J. Gruin (2019)
Financializing authoritarian capitalism: Chinese fintech and the institutional foundations of algorithmic governance
Finance and Society
A. Fraser (2019)
Land grab/data grab: precision agriculture and its new horizons
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46
Mario Lezoche, J. Hormazabal, M. Díaz, H. Panetto, J. Kacprzyk (2020)
Agri-food 4.0: A survey of the supply chains and technologies for the future agriculture
Comput. Ind., 117
(2020)
Farmforce in a nutshell
(ETC Group. 2019. Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings by 2018 revenue. https://etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/files/etc_platetechtonics_a4_nov2019_web.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
ETC Group. 2019. Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings by 2018 revenue. https://etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/files/etc_platetechtonics_a4_nov2019_web.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2020.
ETC Group. 2019. Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings by 2018 revenue. https://etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/files/etc_platetechtonics_a4_nov2019_web.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2020., ETC Group. 2019. Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings by 2018 revenue. https://etcgroup.org/sites/www.etcgroup.org/files/files/etc_platetechtonics_a4_nov2019_web.pdf. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(Ghiotto, L. and J. Echaide. 2019. Analysis of the agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur. Berlin, Buenos Aires, Brussels: The Greens/EFA and PowerShift. https://www.annacavazzini.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Summary-EU-Mercosur-Luciana-Ghiotto-Javier-Echaide.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Ghiotto, L. and J. Echaide. 2019. Analysis of the agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur. Berlin, Buenos Aires, Brussels: The Greens/EFA and PowerShift. https://www.annacavazzini.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Summary-EU-Mercosur-Luciana-Ghiotto-Javier-Echaide.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Ghiotto, L. and J. Echaide. 2019. Analysis of the agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur. Berlin, Buenos Aires, Brussels: The Greens/EFA and PowerShift. https://www.annacavazzini.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Summary-EU-Mercosur-Luciana-Ghiotto-Javier-Echaide.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Ghiotto, L. and J. Echaide. 2019. Analysis of the agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur. Berlin, Buenos Aires, Brussels: The Greens/EFA and PowerShift. https://www.annacavazzini.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Summary-EU-Mercosur-Luciana-Ghiotto-Javier-Echaide.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
J. Dixon (1999)
A cultural economy model for studying food systems
Agriculture and Human Values, 16
DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Institute. www.broad insti tute.org. Accessed 14
Top shareholder won't back Bayer management in AGM vote
(2018)
Top e-commerce companies move into retail
(Jouanjean, M.-A. 2019. Digital opportunities for trade in the agriculture and food sectors. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers. Paris: OECD. 10.1787/91c40e07-en)
Jouanjean, M.-A. 2019. Digital opportunities for trade in the agriculture and food sectors. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers. Paris: OECD. 10.1787/91c40e07-en
Jouanjean, M.-A. 2019. Digital opportunities for trade in the agriculture and food sectors. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers. Paris: OECD. 10.1787/91c40e07-en, Jouanjean, M.-A. 2019. Digital opportunities for trade in the agriculture and food sectors. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Papers. Paris: OECD. 10.1787/91c40e07-en
Increasing transparency on the ground
M. Carolan (2020)
Acting like an algorithm: digital farming platforms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in
Agriculture and Human Values
M. Lätzel (2020)
Philipp Staab: Digitaler Kapitalismus. Markt und Herrschaft in der Ökonomie der Unknappheit.
, 68
H. Friedmann (2021)
Changes in the International Division of Labor: Agri-food Complexes and Export Agriculture
Towards a New Political Economy of Agriculture
G. Pechlaner, G. Otero (2008)
The Third Food Regime: Neoliberal Globalism and Agricultural Biotechnology in North America
Sociologia Ruralis, 48
M. Schermann, Holmer Hemsen, Christoph Buchmüller, Till Bitter, H. Krcmar, V. Markl, T. Hoeren (2014)
Big Data
WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, 56
(2014)
Monsanto is using big data to take over the world
(FAO. 2020b. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the agri-food system: Proposing a new international digital council for food and agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca7485en/ca7485en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
FAO. 2020b. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the agri-food system: Proposing a new international digital council for food and agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca7485en/ca7485en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
FAO. 2020b. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the agri-food system: Proposing a new international digital council for food and agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca7485en/ca7485en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., FAO. 2020b. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the agri-food system: Proposing a new international digital council for food and agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca7485en/ca7485en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
M. Carolan (2019)
Automated agrifood futures: robotics, labor and the distributive politics of digital agriculture
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47
(1989)
UK: Emerald Group Publishing
Raj Patel (2013)
The Long Green Revolution
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 40
(Somerville, H. 2017. Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with help from Dubai fund. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indigo-fundraising/farming-startup-indigo-raises-203-million-with-help-from-dubai-fund-idUSKBN1E01PK. Accessed 19 June 2020.)
Somerville, H. 2017. Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with help from Dubai fund. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indigo-fundraising/farming-startup-indigo-raises-203-million-with-help-from-dubai-fund-idUSKBN1E01PK. Accessed 19 June 2020.
Somerville, H. 2017. Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with help from Dubai fund. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indigo-fundraising/farming-startup-indigo-raises-203-million-with-help-from-dubai-fund-idUSKBN1E01PK. Accessed 19 June 2020., Somerville, H. 2017. Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with help from Dubai fund. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-indigo-fundraising/farming-startup-indigo-raises-203-million-with-help-from-dubai-fund-idUSKBN1E01PK. Accessed 19 June 2020.
Elisabeth Andersen, Katharina Schreiber (2020)
“Genome Editing” vor dem EuGH und seine Folgen
Natur und Recht, 42
L. Klerkx, D. Rose (2020)
Dealing with the game-changing technologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and responsibility in food system transition pathways?
Global Food Security
Sarah Rotz, E. Gravely, Ian Mosby, E. Duncan, E. Finnis, Mervyn Horgan, Joseph LeBlanc, R. Martin, H. Neufeld, Andrew Nixon, L. Pant, Vivian Shalla, Evan Fraser (2019)
Automated pastures and the digital divide: How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural communities
Journal of Rural Studies
Victo Neto (2019)
Platform capitalism
Revista Brasileira de Inovação
H. Friedmann (2005)
From Colonialism to Green Capitalism: Social Movements and Emergence of Food Regimes
, 11
P. McMichael (2009)
A food regime analysis of the ‘world food crisis’
Agriculture and Human Values, 26
(Mitchell, C. 2019. How an ag company most people have never heard of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Counter. https://thecounter.org/indigo-agriculture-disruptive-startup/. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Mitchell, C. 2019. How an ag company most people have never heard of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Counter. https://thecounter.org/indigo-agriculture-disruptive-startup/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Mitchell, C. 2019. How an ag company most people have never heard of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Counter. https://thecounter.org/indigo-agriculture-disruptive-startup/. Accessed 18 June 2020., Mitchell, C. 2019. How an ag company most people have never heard of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Counter. https://thecounter.org/indigo-agriculture-disruptive-startup/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(FAO. 2020a. The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/economic/ess/environment/data/emission-shares/en/. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
FAO. 2020a. The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/economic/ess/environment/data/emission-shares/en/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
FAO. 2020a. The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/economic/ess/environment/data/emission-shares/en/. Accessed 18 June 2020., FAO. 2020a. The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/economic/ess/environment/data/emission-shares/en/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(2019)
Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting sales of some products
(Thomasson, E. 2019. Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting sales of some products. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-carrefour-blockchain/carrefour-says-blockchain-tracking-boosting-sales-of-some-products-idUSKCN1T42A5. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Thomasson, E. 2019. Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting sales of some products. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-carrefour-blockchain/carrefour-says-blockchain-tracking-boosting-sales-of-some-products-idUSKCN1T42A5. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Thomasson, E. 2019. Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting sales of some products. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-carrefour-blockchain/carrefour-says-blockchain-tracking-boosting-sales-of-some-products-idUSKCN1T42A5. Accessed 18 June 2020., Thomasson, E. 2019. Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting sales of some products. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-carrefour-blockchain/carrefour-says-blockchain-tracking-boosting-sales-of-some-products-idUSKCN1T42A5. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(Lang, T., and P. Wiggins. 1985. The industrialisation of the U.K. food system: From production to consumption. In The Industrialisation of the Countryside, edited by M. J. Healey, and B. W. Ilbery, 45–56. Norwich: Geobooks.)
Lang, T., and P. Wiggins. 1985. The industrialisation of the U.K. food system: From production to consumption. In The Industrialisation of the Countryside, edited by M. J. Healey, and B. W. Ilbery, 45–56. Norwich: Geobooks.
Lang, T., and P. Wiggins. 1985. The industrialisation of the U.K. food system: From production to consumption. In The Industrialisation of the Countryside, edited by M. J. Healey, and B. W. Ilbery, 45–56. Norwich: Geobooks., Lang, T., and P. Wiggins. 1985. The industrialisation of the U.K. food system: From production to consumption. In The Industrialisation of the Countryside, edited by M. J. Healey, and B. W. Ilbery, 45–56. Norwich: Geobooks.
I. Carbonell (2016)
The Ethics of Big Data in Big Agriculture
Development Economics: Agriculture
P. Newell, O. Taylor (2018)
Contested landscapes: the global political economy of climate-smart agriculture
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 45
(Mooney, P. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. IPES-Food. https://www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/Concentration_FullReport.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Mooney, P. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. IPES-Food. https://www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/Concentration_FullReport.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Mooney, P. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. IPES-Food. https://www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/Concentration_FullReport.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Mooney, P. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. IPES-Food. https://www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/Concentration_FullReport.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
(2019)
Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
A. Fraser (2019)
The digital revolution, data curation, and the new dynamics of food sovereignty construction
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47
(2018)
Transforming agriculture with data driven insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agritech
(2020)
Can digital farming really address the systemic causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe
(IPES-Food. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. www.ipes-food.org. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
IPES-Food. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. www.ipes-food.org. Accessed 18 June 2020.
IPES-Food. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. www.ipes-food.org. Accessed 18 June 2020., IPES-Food. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. www.ipes-food.org. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(Nestlé. 2019. Lagebericht. Veyvey: Nestlé. https://www.nestle.de/sites/g/files/pydnoa391/files/2020-03/Nestl%C3%A9%2520Global%2520Report%25202019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Nestlé. 2019. Lagebericht. Veyvey: Nestlé. https://www.nestle.de/sites/g/files/pydnoa391/files/2020-03/Nestl%C3%A9%2520Global%2520Report%25202019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Nestlé. 2019. Lagebericht. Veyvey: Nestlé. https://www.nestle.de/sites/g/files/pydnoa391/files/2020-03/Nestl%C3%A9%2520Global%2520Report%25202019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Nestlé. 2019. Lagebericht. Veyvey: Nestlé. https://www.nestle.de/sites/g/files/pydnoa391/files/2020-03/Nestl%C3%A9%2520Global%2520Report%25202019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
(Cargill. n.d. GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. Cargill. https://www.cargill.com/sustainability/cocoa/gps-mapping. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Cargill. n.d. GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. Cargill. https://www.cargill.com/sustainability/cocoa/gps-mapping. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Cargill. n.d. GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. Cargill. https://www.cargill.com/sustainability/cocoa/gps-mapping. Accessed 18 June 2020., Cargill. n.d. GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. Cargill. https://www.cargill.com/sustainability/cocoa/gps-mapping. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(2019)
Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht : Patente - Kartell für große Konzerne . In Rundbrief 2 , Ed
(Bernstein, H. 2015. Food regimes and food regime analysis: A selective survey. Paper presented at the land grabbing, conflict and agrarian‐environmental transformations: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai University.)
Bernstein, H. 2015. Food regimes and food regime analysis: A selective survey. Paper presented at the land grabbing, conflict and agrarian‐environmental transformations: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai University.
Bernstein, H. 2015. Food regimes and food regime analysis: A selective survey. Paper presented at the land grabbing, conflict and agrarian‐environmental transformations: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai University., Bernstein, H. 2015. Food regimes and food regime analysis: A selective survey. Paper presented at the land grabbing, conflict and agrarian‐environmental transformations: Perspectives from East and Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai University.
S. Freidberg (2018)
Assembled but unrehearsed: corporate food power and the ‘dance’ of supply chain sustainability
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47
(Indigo Agriculture. 2020. Indigo closes $200M financing to support continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Marketplace and Indigo Carbon. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-closes-200m-financing. Accessed 19 June 2020.)
Indigo Agriculture. 2020. Indigo closes $200M financing to support continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Marketplace and Indigo Carbon. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-closes-200m-financing. Accessed 19 June 2020.
Indigo Agriculture. 2020. Indigo closes $200M financing to support continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Marketplace and Indigo Carbon. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-closes-200m-financing. Accessed 19 June 2020., Indigo Agriculture. 2020. Indigo closes $200M financing to support continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Marketplace and Indigo Carbon. Indigoag.com. https://www.indigoag.com/pages/news/indigo-closes-200m-financing. Accessed 19 June 2020.
(2020)
Srnicek, N
(2001)
Commodity systems analysis : An approach to the sociology of agriculture
Mark Tilzey (2019)
Food Regimes, Capital, State, and Class: Friedmann and McMichael Revisited
Sociologia Ruralis
(Harvest Croo Robotics. 2020. Why Harvest CROO Robotics? https://harvestcroo.com/about/#why-automation. Accessed 19 June 2020.)
Harvest Croo Robotics. 2020. Why Harvest CROO Robotics? https://harvestcroo.com/about/#why-automation. Accessed 19 June 2020.
Harvest Croo Robotics. 2020. Why Harvest CROO Robotics? https://harvestcroo.com/about/#why-automation. Accessed 19 June 2020., Harvest Croo Robotics. 2020. Why Harvest CROO Robotics? https://harvestcroo.com/about/#why-automation. Accessed 19 June 2020.
(Jessop, S., and L. Burger. 2019. Top shareholder won't back Bayer management in AGM vote. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-shareholder/blackrock-will-not-back-bayer-management-in-agm-vote-sources-idUSKCN1RZ1A8. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Jessop, S., and L. Burger. 2019. Top shareholder won't back Bayer management in AGM vote. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-shareholder/blackrock-will-not-back-bayer-management-in-agm-vote-sources-idUSKCN1RZ1A8. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Jessop, S., and L. Burger. 2019. Top shareholder won't back Bayer management in AGM vote. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-shareholder/blackrock-will-not-back-bayer-management-in-agm-vote-sources-idUSKCN1RZ1A8. Accessed 18 June 2020., Jessop, S., and L. Burger. 2019. Top shareholder won't back Bayer management in AGM vote. Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bayer-shareholder/blackrock-will-not-back-bayer-management-in-agm-vote-sources-idUSKCN1RZ1A8. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(Kuhlmann, K., M. Wand, and Y. Zhou. 2019. Assessment of regulation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China’s regime. New Markets Lab. https://www.syngentafoundation.org/sites/g/files/zhg576/f/2019/08/12/assessment_of_regulation_of_food_safety_in_e-commerce_-_global_good_regulatory_practices_june_2019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Kuhlmann, K., M. Wand, and Y. Zhou. 2019. Assessment of regulation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China’s regime. New Markets Lab. https://www.syngentafoundation.org/sites/g/files/zhg576/f/2019/08/12/assessment_of_regulation_of_food_safety_in_e-commerce_-_global_good_regulatory_practices_june_2019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Kuhlmann, K., M. Wand, and Y. Zhou. 2019. Assessment of regulation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China’s regime. New Markets Lab. https://www.syngentafoundation.org/sites/g/files/zhg576/f/2019/08/12/assessment_of_regulation_of_food_safety_in_e-commerce_-_global_good_regulatory_practices_june_2019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Kuhlmann, K., M. Wand, and Y. Zhou. 2019. Assessment of regulation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China’s regime. New Markets Lab. https://www.syngentafoundation.org/sites/g/files/zhg576/f/2019/08/12/assessment_of_regulation_of_food_safety_in_e-commerce_-_global_good_regulatory_practices_june_2019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
P. McMichael (2020)
Does China's ‘going out’ strategy prefigure a new food regime?
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 47
(2012)
Food regimes
The Oxford Handbook of Food History Online
(2017)
Too big to feed : Exploring the impacts of megamergers , concentration , concentration of power in the agri - food sector Lagebericht . Veyvey : Nestlé
Indigo closes $200M financing to support continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Marketplace and Indigo Carbon
(2019)
Lagebericht
(Cameron, D. 2017. DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Institute. www.broadinstitute.org. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Cameron, D. 2017. DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Institute. www.broadinstitute.org. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Cameron, D. 2017. DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Institute. www.broadinstitute.org. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Cameron, D. 2017. DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Institute. www.broadinstitute.org. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Raychel Santo, Ana Moragues-Faus (2019)
Towards a trans-local food governance: Exploring the transformative capacity of food policy assemblages in the US and UK
Geoforum
Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with help from Dubai fund
M. Carolan (2018)
Big data and food retail: Nudging out citizens by creating dependent consumers
Geoforum, 90
D. Burch, G. Lawrence (2009)
Towards a third food regime: behind the transformation
Agriculture and Human Values, 26
(Schimpf, M. 2020. Can digital farming really address the systemic causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe. https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/gmos/2020/foee-digital-farming-paper-feb-2020.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Schimpf, M. 2020. Can digital farming really address the systemic causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe. https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/gmos/2020/foee-digital-farming-paper-feb-2020.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Schimpf, M. 2020. Can digital farming really address the systemic causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe. https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/gmos/2020/foee-digital-farming-paper-feb-2020.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Schimpf, M. 2020. Can digital farming really address the systemic causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe. https://www.foeeurope.org/sites/default/files/gmos/2020/foee-digital-farming-paper-feb-2020.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Paul PhD, G. Lawrence (2019)
Chinese state capitalism and neomercantilism in the contemporary food regime: contradictions, continuity and change
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 46
P. McMichael (2012)
The land grab and corporate food regime restructuring
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 39
(Trendov, N. M., S. Varas, and M. Zeng. 2019. Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca4985en/ca4985en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
Trendov, N. M., S. Varas, and M. Zeng. 2019. Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca4985en/ca4985en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Trendov, N. M., S. Varas, and M. Zeng. 2019. Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca4985en/ca4985en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., Trendov, N. M., S. Varas, and M. Zeng. 2019. Digital technologies in agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://www.fao.org/3/ca4985en/ca4985en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
Rob Kitchin (2014)
Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts
Big Data & Society, 1
L. Klerkx, E. Jakku, P. Labarthe (2019)
A review of social science on digital agriculture, smart farming and agriculture 4.0: New contributions and a future research agenda
Njas-wageningen Journal of Life Sciences
(Rana, S. 2020. Interview: Syngenta's digital offerings will effectively accompany its core CP/seed products. Agrow. https://agrow.agribusinessintelligence.informa.com/AG032365/Interview-Syngentas-digital-offerings-will-effectively-accompany-its-core-CPseed-products. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Rana, S. 2020. Interview: Syngenta's digital offerings will effectively accompany its core CP/seed products. Agrow. https://agrow.agribusinessintelligence.informa.com/AG032365/Interview-Syngentas-digital-offerings-will-effectively-accompany-its-core-CPseed-products. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Rana, S. 2020. Interview: Syngenta's digital offerings will effectively accompany its core CP/seed products. Agrow. https://agrow.agribusinessintelligence.informa.com/AG032365/Interview-Syngentas-digital-offerings-will-effectively-accompany-its-core-CPseed-products. Accessed 18 June 2020., Rana, S. 2020. Interview: Syngenta's digital offerings will effectively accompany its core CP/seed products. Agrow. https://agrow.agribusinessintelligence.informa.com/AG032365/Interview-Syngentas-digital-offerings-will-effectively-accompany-its-core-CPseed-products. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(1985)
The industrialisation of the U.K. food system: From production to consumption
M. Vanderroost, P. Ragaert, J. Verwaeren, B. Meulenaer, B. Baets, F. Devlieghere (2017)
The digitization of a food package's life cycle: Existing and emerging computer systems in the pre-logistics phase
Comput. Ind., 87
K. Bronson, Irena Knezevic (2016)
Big Data in food and agriculture
Big Data & Society, 3
(2018)
Food regimes, corporate concentration and its implications for decent work
Decent Work Deficits in Southern Agriculture: Measurements, Drivers and Strategies
(Kumar, D. 2018. Top e-commerce companies move into retail. GRAIN. https://www.grain.org/en/article/5957-top-e-commerce-companies-move-into-retail. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Kumar, D. 2018. Top e-commerce companies move into retail. GRAIN. https://www.grain.org/en/article/5957-top-e-commerce-companies-move-into-retail. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Kumar, D. 2018. Top e-commerce companies move into retail. GRAIN. https://www.grain.org/en/article/5957-top-e-commerce-companies-move-into-retail. Accessed 18 June 2020., Kumar, D. 2018. Top e-commerce companies move into retail. GRAIN. https://www.grain.org/en/article/5957-top-e-commerce-companies-move-into-retail. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Indigo announces first closing of $156M in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag
The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emissions
B. Friedrich, Sarah Hackfort, M. Boyer, Daniela Gottschlich (2019)
Conflicts over GMOs and their Contribution to Food Democracy
Politics and Governance
S. Wolfert, L. Ge, C. Verdouw, M. Bogaardt (2017)
Big Data in Smart Farming – A review
Agricultural Systems, 153
M. Fourcade, Kieran Healy (2016)
Seeing like a market
Socio-economic Review, 15
(Farmforce. n.d. Farmforce in a nutshell. Farmforce.com. https://farmforce.com/product/. Accessed 18 June 2020.)
Farmforce. n.d. Farmforce in a nutshell. Farmforce.com. https://farmforce.com/product/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
Farmforce. n.d. Farmforce in a nutshell. Farmforce.com. https://farmforce.com/product/. Accessed 18 June 2020., Farmforce. n.d. Farmforce in a nutshell. Farmforce.com. https://farmforce.com/product/. Accessed 18 June 2020.
(1991)
Reprise on commodity system methodology
Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings by
(2019)
Assessment of regulation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China's regime. New Markets Lab
(Then, C. 2019. Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht: Patente-Kartell für große Konzerne. In Rundbrief 2, Ed. Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung, 10–13.)
Then, C. 2019. Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht: Patente-Kartell für große Konzerne. In Rundbrief 2, Ed. Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung, 10–13.
Then, C. 2019. Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht: Patente-Kartell für große Konzerne. In Rundbrief 2, Ed. Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung, 10–13., Then, C. 2019. Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht: Patente-Kartell für große Konzerne. In Rundbrief 2, Ed. Forum Umwelt und Entwicklung, 10–13.
Louisa Prause, P. Billon (2020)
Struggles for land: comparing resistance movements against agro-industrial and mining investment projects
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 48
(2020)
Interview: Syngenta’s digital offerings will effectively accompany its core CP/seed products
B. Hunter (2001)
European Commission
International Journal of Integrated Care, 1
Harriet Friedma, P. McMichael (1989)
AGRICULTURE AND THE STATE SYSTEM: The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to the present
Sociologia Ruralis, 29
(2020)
GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. Cargill. https ://www.cargi ll.com/susta inabi lity/cocoa /gps-mappi
How an ag company most people have never heard of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Counter
(PA Consulting. 2018. Transforming agriculture with data driven insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agritech. London: PA Consulting Group. https://www.paconsulting.com/insights/2018/digitalagriculture/. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.)
PA Consulting. 2018. Transforming agriculture with data driven insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agritech. London: PA Consulting Group. https://www.paconsulting.com/insights/2018/digitalagriculture/. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
PA Consulting. 2018. Transforming agriculture with data driven insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agritech. London: PA Consulting Group. https://www.paconsulting.com/insights/2018/digitalagriculture/. Accessed 14 Sept 2020., PA Consulting. 2018. Transforming agriculture with data driven insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agritech. London: PA Consulting Group. https://www.paconsulting.com/insights/2018/digitalagriculture/. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.
B. Pritchard (2019)
Food Regimes
International Encyclopedia of Human Geography
Analysis of the agreement between the European Union and the Mercosur
Leanne Roderick (2014)
Discipline and Power in the Digital Age: The Case of the US Consumer Data Broker Industry
Critical Sociology, 40

Publisher: Springer Journals
Copyright: Copyright © The Author(s) 2020
ISSN: 0889-048X
eISSN: 1572-8366
DOI: 10.1007/s10460-020-10161-2
Publisher site: See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article asks how the application of digital technologies is changing the organization of the agri-food system in the context of the third food regime. The academic debate on digitalization and food largely focuses on the input and farm level. Yet, based on the analysis of 280 digital services and products, we show that digital technologies are now being used along the entire food commodity chain. We argue that digital technologies in the third food regime serve on the one hand as a continuation of established information and communication technologies, thus deepening certain features of the existing food regime such as the retail sector’s control over global commodity chains. On the other hand, digital technologies also introduce new forms of control and value extraction based on the use of data and pave the way for large tech companies to take over market shares in the agri-food sector. Finally, we find that multinational agri-food companies are starting to take on the business models of leading digital tech companies, for instance by developing digital platforms throughout the agri-food system. We argue that this shows that the broader economic restructuring of neoliberal capitalism towards digital capitalism is also making its way into the agri-food system. Keywords Food regime · Digital agriculture · Agri-food system · Food commodity chain · Agrarian labor · Digital platforms Introduction (FAO), which is about to establish an International Digital Council for Food and Agriculture (FAO 2020b). The digitalization of agriculture is widely hailed as the next The academic literature offers a slightly more nuanced agricultural revolution that will change how food is produced picture. Digital agriculture might help farmers to be more and consumed (e.g. Trendov et al. 2019). Both political and precise with inputs by offering information on ecological corporate leaders argue that digitalization offers the solution conditions through precise weather forecasts or sensors to feeding a growing world population, while at the same scanning the soil (for an overview, see Klerkx et al. 2019; time mitigating the negative environmental and climate con- Lezoche et al. 2020). Furthermore, farms will be able to sequences of (industrial) agriculture (see Newell and Taylor reduce labor costs through the use of robotics or (semi-) 2017). The digitalization of food production has become a autonomous machines. This will influence agrarian labor key component of various governments’ recent bioeconomy conditions and might lead to job losses in the sector (Carolan strategies and is being pushed in international fora such as 2019). This in turn might translate into more people leav- the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization ing rural communities to find jobs in urban centers (Rotz et al. 2019). Digital agriculture also raises questions of data security and sovereignty as well as farmer autonomy (Fraser 2019; Bronson and Knezevic 2016; Wolfert et al. 2017), Electronic supplementary material The online version of this and might enhance inequalities between farmers (Klerkx and article (https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1046 0-020-10161 -2) contains Rose 2020). supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Several studies stress the importance of looking at digi- * Louisa Prause talization within the agri-food sector as a whole (e.g. Bron- louisa.prause@hu-berlin.de son and Knezevic 2016). ‘Agriculture 4.0′ is a term given to this digital transformation that indicates “potentially game- Department of Agriculture and Food Policy, Research Group changing technologies that can dramatically affect the way BioMaterialities, Humboldt-Universität Zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 642 L. Prause et al. food is produced, processed, traded, and consumed” (Klerkx The article is structured as follows. First, we outline our and Rose 2020, p. 14). Nevertheless, a large proportion of theoretical framework, which is based on debates around the literature on the digitalization of the agri-food system the third food regime. Second, we provide an overview of still focuses on the digitalization of farming. Other parts of our data selection and analysis. In the empirical part of the the agri-food system like food processing, trade, transporta- paper, we identify key digital technologies for each step of tion or retail and consumption have received less attention the food commodity chain and highlight how they are chang- (but see Carolan 2018 and Fraser 2020 on food retail and ing the organization of the current food regime. Finally, we consumption; Vanderroost et al. 2017 on food packaging; conclude by reflecting on continuities and changes in the Lezoche et al. 2020 on supply chains). third food regime, and highlight the importance of digitali- The food regime concept was originally developed by zation as both a continuation of ICTs and in terms of facili- critical agrarian studies scholars in the late 1980s as a way to tating a transition towards new forms of generating value focus on the agri-food system as a whole and to identify the and corporate control. “historicized logic to the complexities of agro-food econom- ics and politics” (Pritchard 2009, p. 221). Since the begin- ning of the 2000s, the food regime approach has received Theoretical framework renewed interest, as global food politics is discussed in view of the characteristics of a third food regime. Contributions In order to better understand how digitalization might acknowledge the importance of information and communi- change the current agri-food system, we build upon the cation technology (ICT) for the development of global food food regime concept as developed chiefly by Friedmann and commodity chains—a key feature of the third food regime. McMichael (1989). Food regimes, though relatively stable, However, these debates have so far not fully engaged with are also contingent, contested and temporary “constellations the recent development of new technologies, particularly of governments, corporations, collective organisations, and digitalization. McMichael (2019) mentions the increasing individuals that allow for renewed accumulation of capital importance of “bio-capitalism (…) and the technologization based on shared definition of social purpose by key actors, of nature and digitalization” (133), Dörr (2018) notes cor- while marginalising others …” (Friedmann 2005, p. 228). porate concentrations in the area of precision farming, and How a food regime is organized has important implications Newell and Taylor (2017) present an interesting discourse for farmers, food workers and consumers, and shapes the analysis on ‘climate-smart’ agriculture. Yet a more system- power relations between these groups and agri-food corpora- atic engagement with digital technologies is so far missing. tions (Friedmann 2005, p. 228). In this article, we bring together the debates on digital The analysis of food regimes is methodologically con- agriculture and the third food regime in order to provide a sistent with commodity chain approaches in the tradition of better understanding of how digital technologies are chang- Friedland (1984), since it traces production relations glob- ing the agri-food system. This is particularly relevant since ally. Yet it also goes further in terms of integrating consump- recent contributions on the third food regime (e.g. McMi- tion and state actors—issues that have long been neglected chael 2019; Tilzey 2019) point to the transition of some in commodity chain approaches (Dixon 1999; Friedland features of the regime, to which the rise of digital technolo- 2001). Food regime analysis offers an analytical lens to gies might contribute. Our central research question is how grasp the broader economic and (geo-)political relations, the digital technologies shape the organization of the third food discursive legitimations, rules, norms and regulations, social regime. Our aim is first to provide a broader picture of the forces such as social movements, and the technical and envi- digital technologies that are currently applied in food com- ronmental changes that organize food production, consump- modity chains, and secondly to evaluate where digital tech- tion and distribution in historical constellations of power and nologies act as a mere ‘update’ of ICTs, and if and where we accumulation (Magnan 2012; Bernstein 2015). Thus, rather can identify potential shifts in the current organization of the than tracing the relations of production for a specific com- agri-food system due to digital technologies. We answer our modity, it enables us to comprehensively analyze the organi- research question through an empirical analysis of 280 key zation of the agri-food system at the macro-level. While this digital technological products and services currently offered approach admittedly omits local-level developments, it is in one or several steps of the global food commodity chain. nevertheless useful for our analysis since it offers an analyti- We focused our analysis on food crops, and excluded dairy cal lens to situate digital technologies as new forces shaping production and processing as well as livestock raising, meat the production, distribution and consumption of food in the production and aquaculture. We also excluded developments socio-economic and political context of the current agri-food in urban agriculture from our data set, since we believe that system in a historically-informed and comprehensive way. to date their contribution to the global production of food The approach distinguishes three different global remains limited. food regimes that have been interrupted by periods of 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 643 transformation and instability: the colonial food regime, food quality and safety standards (Friedmann 2005). In which corresponded with British imperial rule from the response to a growing number of increasingly environmen- 1870s to 1914; the second food regime of the post-war tally-conscious and affluent consumers in the Global North, period from 1947 until 1973, which corresponded with corporate actors, particularly supermarkets, are legitimizing American imperialism; and the third food regime, which has their actions through narratives of environmental sustain- been identified for the period from the creation of the WTO ability, which exist side-by-side with narratives developed in 1995 until today, and has been dubbed the ‘corporate during the second food regime that stress modernization, food regime’ by McMichael (2009) or the ‘corporate-envi- food security and increased yields (Bernstein 2015). In order ronmental food regime’ by Friedmann (2005). McMichael to legitimize their products as environmentally friendly, a himself, however, states that the “corporate food regime is number of supermarket-driven private certification schemes in transition” (2019, p. 118). Many of the dominant rela- have been developed, which have taken over regulatory func- tions of the third food regime are still in place, while new tions from the state. ones are emerging (McMichael 2019, p. 133). Digital tech- Large agri-food companies formed during the second nologies are thus entering the agri-food system in a period food regime now dominate the production of farm inputs, where its organization is unstable and contested, and they food trade, processing and retail, and there is even greater might play an important role in current reconfigurations corporate concentration through mergers and takeovers of the food regime. Both the first and second regimes have (Dörr 2018). Closely linked to the feature of corporate power been described extensively elsewhere (e.g. Friedmann and is the issue of financialization and the increasing influence of McMichael 1989; Friedmann 2005; McMichael 2009). We n fi ance capital on the agri-food system (Burch and Lawrence therefore focus on identifying the key characteristics of the 2009). Established agri-food companies, start-ups as well third food regime that are still in place, and point to both as land itself have become the targets of speculative invest- historical continuities as well as new emerging relations. ments by asset managers (McMichael 2019). The third food regime is characterized by neoliberal, free The third food regime inherited from the second regime market policies as the dominant mode of regulation and is the dominant production model of fossil-fuel-driven, large- driven by global market prices (McMichael 2009). However, scale and capital-intensive agro-industrial farms. This model the ongoing blockade of WTO negotiations, the recent col- was exported to the Global South as the ‘Green Revolution’ lapse of its Appellate Body, as well as the return of “agro- (Patel 2013), and since the mid-2000s has been expanded security mercantilism” (McMichael 2012) in the form of through another round of enclosures, also referred to as the land grabbing all show that neoliberal hegemony is frag- ‘global land grab’ (Prause 2020). The expansion of industrial menting (Tilzey 2019). Nevertheless, WTO rules still apply agriculture and global food trade in the third food regime is and constitute a residual feature of the third food regime, contributing significantly to the advancement of the climate while emerging developments include bi- and multilateral crisis and the marginalization of the cultural and ecological trade agreements as well as various corporate and financial knowledge of small-scale farmers (McMichael 2009). The deals and mergers with and across states (McMichael 2019). corresponding tension between an agro-ecological small- Unlike the two previous regimes, the third does not feature scale model of farming and large-scale industrial agriculture one hegemonic nation state, but points to multipolarity, with is crucial. Food sovereignty and agro-ecology movements China being the most important new player on the agri-food around the globe are struggling to enact a different mode of stage alongside Brazil and India (McMichael 2019). agricultural production and a reorganization and democrati- The third food regime is characterized by the rapid expan- zation of the agri-food system towards more localized, eco- sion of global food commodity chains. Many countries of the logical means of food production and consumption, which Global South are now incorporated into commodity chains would guarantee the sovereignty and well-being of family as sources of cheap processed foodstuffs on the one hand and farmers and sustain nature’s ability to reproduce itself (Frie- of fresh fruit and vegetables for an affluent consumer class drich et al. 2019; Prause and Le Billon 2020). in the Global North on the other (Burch and Lawrence 2009, The rise of global commodity chains in the third food p. 275). This has resulted in more flexible systems of pro- regime was enabled by the interplay of trade liberalization duction, often based on contracts, extensive shift work, and and the establishment of a new ICT infrastructure during flexible and precarious working conditions for farm work - the dot-com boom of the 1990s, which made possible the ers, with the aim of achieving continuous production and coordination and exchange of information within complex stabilizing constant and reliable supply to the major retailers. global networks. Technological developments in cooling, Global food commodity chains are controlled by large super- preserving and transportation were likewise precondi- markets, which have greatly increased their power compared tions for guaranteeing year-round access to fresh produce to their position in the second food regime and have taken for affluent consumers (McMichael 2009). Mechanization, over certain regulatory functions from state actors, including advances in plant research, the use of chemical inputs and 1 3 644 L. Prause et al. seed modification were the driving technologies of the sec- government agencies, consultancies and multilateral organi- ond food regime, and continue to be so in the third. Further zations. We also included in our database technologies that key technologies in the third food regime include advances were mentioned in academic peer-reviewed articles; this was in biotechnologies, particularly the development of geneti- particularly relevant for those steps in the food commodity cally-modified seeds, which have further increased corporate chain where we found only a few reports published by non- power (Pechlaner and Otero 2008). academic actors (e.g. food packaging). New technologies therefore contribute to shifting power We found 92 studies in total, of which we identified 53 relations between food producers, consumers, states and cor- as relevant for our analysis, all published between 2011 and porate actors, and in conjunction with rules and regulations 2020. Our selection criteria were based on relevance to our play an important role in the organization of food regimes. research question, the report’s quality, and the description What is missing in the literature so far is discussion of a new of digital technologies already on the market. Based on our set of technologies—digital technologies—that are making reports, we identified and categorized 280 services or prod- their way rapidly into the agri-food system in a period where ucts based on digital technologies provided by 197 compa- the third food regime is in transition. To structure our analy- nies, start-ups and public and governmental institutions that sis of digital technologies, we distinguished the following are being applied across the entire food commodity chain. steps within a food commodity chain (following Lang and We do not claim to provide a comprehensive overview of Wiggins 1985): the production of agricultural inputs, includ- all digital technology products that are currently used in the ing fertilizers, pesticides and plant breeding, including GMO agri-food system. Rather, our aim is to give an overview of seeds; the farming process, including irrigation and crop some of the key technologies that are currently being applied growing; the trade of raw agricultural produce; food process- and to discuss their impacts for the third food regime. For ing, where raw agricultural products are manufactured into our analysis, we first sorted the digital products according to finished food products, as a basic or highly processed com- their place in the food commodity chain. We then researched modity; food packaging; transport and storage; and finally the product and the company offering it online. Based on food retail and consumption, which includes major super- this search, we categorized the companies according to their markets and smaller independent traders selling produce sector and size, and researched the main investors where directly to end consumers. applicable. We also added additional information on the types of agriculture that these technologies were developed for and the narratives used by corporate actors. Finally, we Methodology added additional information on the purpose and function of the products and services to build clusters that grouped Academic literature has largely neglected the digitaliza- together a range of products based on digital technologies tion of the agri-food system beyond the farming sector, and that offer a similar kind of service to the farmer/consumer/ peer-reviewed articles often only provide a few examples of food processor etc., even though they might differ in their concrete digital technologies. In order to gain an overview respective functions. of important technological developments, we based our data corpus on reports mainly compiled by non-academic insti- tutions and on an extensive online search of the websites of agri-food companies that sell digital technologies. We gathered our data between February and April 2020, using Google, Google Scholar and Scopus as our prime search After our preliminary search, we were missing reports by NGOs engines. Our aim was to include reports by a wide diversity and political institutions, so we searched specifically for reports by of actors to gain a comprehensive overview of the digital NGOs active in the agrarian sector. We looked at the websites of technologies applied in the agri-food system. We there- GRAIN, Oakland Institute, Friends of the Earth, the Transnational fore included studies issued by corporate actors, NGOs, Institute, the European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT), the International Union of Food and Tour- ism (IUF), ILO and FAO. We also noted that some of the reports had a regional focus. Furthermore, as our initial search did not cover all world regions, we conducted another search based on the terms ‘digi- tal’ AND ‘food,’ and ‘digital’ AND ‘agriculture’ AND ‘Latin Amer- Search words were ‘agriculture,’ ‘farming,’ ‘food processing,’ ‘food ica,’ ‘Brazil,’ ‘Mexico,’ ‘USA,’ ‘Canada’ on Google, Google Scholar trade,’ ‘food transport,’ ‘food packaging,’ ‘food retail’ and ‘food con- and SCOPUS. sumption,’ which were combined with ‘digital.’ We also included the combinations ‘food’ AND ‘industry 4.0’ and ‘e-commerce’ AND These reports and articles, as well as the search terms used to iden- ‘food.’ The selection of our search terms might have missed contri- tify them, were only used for identifying specific technologies and butions that do not refer to digital technologies as such but to more building our empirical database. A wider variety of peer-reviewed specific aspects of digitalization, for example (big) data. articles was used for theoretical and analytical purposes. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 645 Table 1 Digital technologies along the food commodity chain Step in food commodity chain Key digital product or service Key actors and example companies Agricultural inputs Fintech for credit evaluation and payment services Start-ups (e.g. Advans Group); non-profit start-ups (e.g. One Acre Fund) Data-based insurances Agriculture insurance companies (e.g. AIG Crop Risk Services) Genome-edited seeds Start-ups (e.g. Calyxt); agro-chemical corporations (e.g. DowDuPont) Farm operations Precision agriculture equipment Start-ups (e.g. Blue River Technology); agro-machine and equipment companies (e.g. John Deere); agro- chemical companies (e.g. Yara International) Farm robotics Start-ups (e.g. Naio Technologies) Digital machine-sharing platforms Start-ups (e.g. Tro Tro Tractor); agro-machine and equipment companies (e.g. Tractors and Farm Equip- ment Limited) Data-based agronomy advice and information Start-ups (e.g. Indigo Ag); social start-ups (e.g. Green Dreams Tech); agro-chemical companies (e.g. Bayer Crop Science); public institutions (e.g. FAO) Farm management platforms Agro-chemical companies (e.g. Syngenta); agro- machine and equipment companies (e.g. John Deere); start-ups (e.g. CropX) Primary commodity trade Digital marketplaces Start-ups (e.g. Indigo Ag); multinational tech com- panies (e.g. Alibaba); multinational food trading corporations (e.g. Cargill) Food processing Collaborative robotics Food processing companies (e.g. Nestlé) 3D food printing Food processing companies (e.g. Choc Edge) Packaging Smart packaging Tech companies (e.g. Adobe Inc) 3D printing for polymer-based materials Tech companies (e.g. MakerBot Industries, LLC) Transport Quality sensors and analytics Logistics companies (e.g. Purfresh); tech companies (e.g. Tellspec) Digital freight management Multinational food trading companies (e.g. Cargill) Digital transport logistics for small-scale producers Farmer organizations (e.g. Zambia National Farmers’ Union); start-ups (e.g. Distrego) Storage Automated warehouses Supermarkets (e.g. Ocado); food processing companies (e.g. Nestlé) Retail and consumption Smart shopping Supermarkets (e.g. Carrefour); tech companies (e.g. Amazon) E-commerce platforms Tech companies (e.g. Alibaba); supermarkets (e.g. Wholefoods Market) Entire commodity chain Digital tools for commodity chain traceability and Supermarkets (e.g. Carrefour); tech companies (e.g. transparency Amazon); farmer organizations (e.g. Ugandan National Union of Coffee Agribusiness and Farm Enterprises); food processors (e.g. Nestlé); food com- modity traders (e.g. Louis Dreyfus) technologies (fintech). While most of these genome-edited Digital technologies along the food seeds have not yet been commercialized, large agro-chemical commodity chain companies are currently racing to secure the patents (Then 2019: 11). Fintech companies rely on a wide range of social Our empirical research shows that digital technologies are and environmental data to determine smallholder farmers’ now used along every step of the food commodity chain. creditworthiness and to administer insurance services. At Table 1 summarizes the most important clusters of digital the farm level, precision-agriculture equipment, robotics, products and services that we found. agronomy advice and information—such as weather apps or The two most significant digital developments taking weed identification apps—and farm management platforms place at the input level are genome-edited seeds, using for make up the main digital developments. These products are example Crispr/Cas9, and the use of innovative financial 1 3 646 L. Prause et al. often sold with the promise of offering a more precise use sections, we analyze how the different technologies we iden- of inputs, reducing the required labor and producing higher tified, as well as the increased dependency on data, shape yields, and are based on the use of big data analysis and key features of the third food regime. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, as well as artificial intelligence (AI) (see also Klerkx and Rose 2020; Lezoche ‘Supermarketization,’ green narratives and tech et al. 2020). Farm management platforms in particular have companies attracted investment from large agri-food companies. Digitalization is also taking place in food commodity Supermarkets have become key actors in the control of trading, processing and storage. A range of digital market- global food commodity chains in the third food regime. place platforms, mostly developed by start-ups, are offering They have taken over regulatory and norm-setting func- to bring farmers and buyers, or input suppliers and farmers, tions regarding standards for high-quality and high-value together. These marketplaces aim to minimize the role of foods such as fresh produce, and more recently also for low- middlemen, and/or differentiate the commodity market as value foods such as corn and soy, that were previously per- a source of new value creation (Mitchell 2019). At the food formed by national governments (Burch and Lawrence 2009; processing level, the main trend in emerging digital tech- Freidberg 2020). Digitalization does not alter the existing nologies involves automation or robotics, such as optical basic principles of traceability and quality standards, but systems that automatically sort fruits and vegetables, and IoT it is advancing them through new tools that allow for more technologies such as collaborative robots that communicate precise product tracing. For instance, food commodities with one another (Nestlé 2019). Some companies are also are often sold in bulk, making them hard to trace beyond experimenting with smart packaging, computer-aided auto- their wider region of origin, unless the retailer is directly mation and 3D printing (Vanderroost et al. 2017). In food involved in production. Digital supply chains make it pos- transportation, different types of quality sensors and analyt- sible to record and store precise information regarding the ics allow for greater control over the condition of the food harvest date for a specific fruit, the location and owner of being transported or stored in order to decrease food safety the plot, when it was packed and how long it took to trans- risks, increase transparency and avoid losses through spoil- port to Europe (Thomasson 2019). Such technologies might ing. In the food storage sector, we observed the emergence provide some degree of transparency for end consumers; of automated warehouses (see also Fraser 2019). however, they also allow for increased data and informa- Further downstream in the commodity chain, our data tion extraction by corporations and might have exclusion- analysis showed three main digital trends for the retail and ary effects for some farmers. If a farmer’s products are consumption sector: the use of data to enhance the trace- considered sub-standard, for instance, they can be targeted ability and transparency of the food commodity chain; smart as individuals rather than as part of a cooperative or larger shopping; and a wide variety of e-commerce platforms oe ff r - farming community. Cargill, one of the largest international ing groceries online. Several large retailers (e.g. Walmart, food traders, uses GPS mapping to obtain detailed informa- Carrefour) are experimenting with digital technologies tion about farm location, size, cultivation methods, as well to trace the supply chains of specific products and make as farmers’ choices about fertilizers and replanting activities, them transparent to the consumer via digital ‘passports,’ or “along with a wealth of information about farming families through blockchain technologies and QR codes. Some of and communities” (Cargill n.d.). Such information allows these technologies also allow retailers to collect consumer food retailers to market their commodities to consumers as data and thus to forecast product-ordering levels and gen- being both ‘safe’ and ‘green,’ and represents a continuation erate individually-customized offers or individual pricing, of the corporate-environmental repositioning that began in thereby influencing consumer behavior (see also Carolan the second food regime. 2018). We also observed large multinational tech companies In the context of digitalization, the environmental narra- like Amazon and Alibaba moving into online food retail and tive also serves a second function, namely to legitimize the offering grocery delivery options. introduction of digital technologies along the global com- Our research suggests that the digital transformation of modity chain. Cargill writes on its website that it uses GPS the food system is largely driven by multinationals from the mapping for more than 56,000 smallholder farms in Côte agri-food and tech sector, as well as private sector start- d’Ivoire, Indonesia and Cameroon “to demonstrate whether ups. The digital technologies developed for this transition a farm location is linked to a deforestation hotspot” as part of differ according to accessibility, the required hardware and their “commitment to eliminating deforestation from [their] infrastructure, the associated costs and the involved actors. cocoa supply chain” (n.d.). The start-up Farmforce claims One common trend in the range of technologies throughout that the purpose of its blockchain technology for commodity the commodity chain is the growing dependence on extract- chain traceability “is to deliver digital solutions to secure ing and analyzing large amounts of data. In the following sustainable sourcing, […] and protect the environment” 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 647 (n.d.). Farm machinery equipment companies and input pro- dominance. In addition to the world’s top grocery retailers ducers claim that digitalization is making their products ‘cli- such as Walmart and Tesco, Amazon and Alibaba have also mate smart’ (Newell and Taylor 2017). Thus, environmental bought into food grocery e-retail (Kumar 2018). With its narratives are legitimizing a digital transition in the food purchase of Whole Foods Market and its use of big data to system that might otherwise raise critical questions about track consumer behavior and preferences, Amazon might issues such as data sovereignty, increased surveillance and become one of the world’s top-10 food retailers (IPES-Food corporate control over farming practices. 2017, p. 45). We thus believe that we are currently witness- Linking ‘sustainability’ to the application of digital tech- ing a shift in corporate power away from the supermarkets nologies also allows corporate actors to gain institutional towards actors in the tech sector, facilitated in part by digital support for their technological developments and to consoli- technologies. date and advance their control over technologies, livelihoods Tech companies are not only active in the retail sector. and food production, while at the same time marginalizing The Chinese company Alibaba, for example, also offers the agro-ecological alternatives in international fora and institu- ET Agricultural Brain, an AI-based tool for enhancing fruit tions (Newell and Taylor 2017). Agri-food corporations have and vegetable planting, while the Alibaba Blockchain Food successfully pushed a ‘climate-smart narrative’ into UN Trust Framework offers blockchain technologies for food institutions such as the FAO. This is mirrored in the recent traceability and transparency. We also found digital technol- announcement by member states of the Global Forum for ogies for data analysis, AI and machine learning developed Food and Agriculture that they will set up an International for agriculture by Microsoft, IBM and SAP. While they do Digital Council for Food and Agriculture under the auspices not yet seem to be threatening the traditional agro-chemical of the FAO. One rationale put forward is the aim to “create and farm machinery companies, tech companies are also a more efficient and equitable global agri-food system that playing an increasingly important role at the downstream would help in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals end of the commodity chain. At the forefront of this move- (SDGs)” (FAO 2020b, p. 2). The EU has also adapted this ment of tech companies into the agri-food sector via digital approach to digital agriculture, stating in a declaration that technologies seem to be US and Chinese companies, with “Digital technologies (…) have the potential to increase farm SAP being a European exception. efficiency while improving economic and environmental sustainability” (European Commission 2019). At the same Financialization time, the EU announced its financial support for the sector through funding for research and development and the estab- Several definitions of the third food regime see not only lishment of “a Europe-wide innovation infrastructure for a supermarketization but also financialization as its defining smart European agri-food sector and a European dataspace feature (e.g. McMichael 2009; Burch and Lawrence 2009). for smart agri-food applications” (FAO 2020b, p. 2). These authors argue that the third food regime reflects the Digital supply chains seem to stabilize rather than chal- overall characteristics of neoliberal capitalism, in that finan- lenge retailers’ control over global commodity chains. At the cial institutions and instruments are increasingly involved same time, we observe a shift within the retail sector, largely along the agri-food commodity chain. We believe this is facilitated by digital technologies, that might threaten the also true in the area of digitalization. Not only have invest- market dominance of traditional supermarkets and contrib- ment companies been instrumental in some of the biggest ute to the transitional forces within the third food regime. mergers in the agri-food system, such as the acquisition of Capital from the tech sector is increasingly invested in the Whole Foods Market by Amazon, but financial investment retail sector and is starting to take over market shares. Until companies also own a growing number of shares in large recently, large supermarket chains relied on established agri-food companies that control key digital technologies in oligopolies in many countries and very little competition. the food commodity chain, such as farm management plat- In the US in 2015, the four largest retailers accounted for forms (Dörr 2018). about 40% of national grocery sales, while in the European Since the 2008 financial crisis, the agri-food sector Union in 2011, the top-five retailers in 13 member states has become an attractive and relatively secure investment accounted for about 60% (IPES-Food 2017, p. 45). With option for financial capital (Burch and Lawrence 2009). In regard to the investors, the concentration is even higher, with 2019, for example, BlackRock held shares in many major only five big asset managers (among them BlackRock and agri-food businesses, amongst them 7.2 percent of voting Vanguard) owning a large portion of company shares in the rights for Bayer-Monsanto and 6.3 percent ownership of retail sector (ETC Group 2019). Spurred by the opportu- Corteva Agriscience, a subsidiary of DowDuPont (Jessop nities of digitalization, several large tech companies have and Burger 2019), therefore wielding increasing market moved into the retail sector to provide e-commerce services power in the sector (ETC Group 2019). Financial investors for groceries, thereby weakening supermarket chains’ market have also been a driving force behind the establishment of 1 3 648 L. Prause et al. many of the start-ups offering digital technologies. In our Corporate power and the ‘data grab’ analysis, we found 57 start-ups offering digital technolo- gies for one or several steps of the food commodity chain. Our data shows that large agri-food and tech corporations Many of these start-ups lack a clear profitability model, are by now controlling many of the key digital technolo- relying instead on investment money in their attempt to gies along the food commodity chain. At the input level, capture market shares (PA Consulting 2018). The start- we observe the traditional big players of the seed markets, up Indigo Agriculture, for example, had raised a total of Bayer, DowDuPont and Syngenta, taking control of new $850 million by the end of January 2020 from corporate genome editing technologies. DowDuPont holds the highest investors such as FedEx and Activant Capital, as well as number of patents on these new technologies and is thus able public investment funds such as Investment Corporation to offer bundled, non-exclusive licenses to a patent pool— of Dubai and Alaska Permanent Fund (Somerville 2017; resulting in considerable market control and power. DowDu- Indigo Agriculture 2020, 2017). Pont currently also leads in international patent applications Traditional agri-food companies are also building up (filed with the World Intellectual Property Organization) in capital venture arms that invest directly in digital agri- the field of genome editing; Bayer follows in second place cultural start-ups. Many of the established multinational before Calyxt, which is marketing the first soybean modified companies in the food system, such as Syngenta, Bayer, using new genetic engineering techniques. Also included John Deere and Cargill, keep track of promising new digi- are Syngenta and BASF, while a few patents have also been tal innovations by collaborating with, or establishing their filed by traditional breeding companies such as KWS (Then own, start-up incubators and accelerators, which connect 2019; Cameron 2017). start-ups or university-based research groups with ven- Beyond such ‘traditional’ forms of corporate control ture capital firms and corporations, to assist in bringing through intellectual property rights, we believe that digi- technological innovations to the market and allowing the talization also allows for new forms of corporate control agri-food multinationals to invest in or absorb promising through the collection and privatization of big data. Big data technologies at an early stage. For example, Blue River refers to large flows and stores of data that are generated Technologies, a company that uses AI to automatically continuously with the aim of being exhaustive and fine- identify and spray herbicide on weeds, was initially funded grained in scope, and flexible and scalable in production by Syngenta’s venture capital arm and later bought by (Kitchin 2014, p. 2). A central node for the collection of John Deere in 2017. As such, it is not simply that finan- data are farm management platforms that collect data points cial investors are expanding into the agri-food sector, but from individual farms. In order to gain access to the benefits that established companies in the sector are themselves of the technology, farmers have to reveal their agricultural increasingly adopting the logic of finance capital (see also knowledge about soil fertility and crops, as well as personal Burch and Lawrence 2009 for the retail sector). farm details. Monsanto’s FieldScript program, for example, A very different aspect of financialization touches requires two years of farm data on yields, soil quality and upon smallholder agriculture and the involvement of new field mapping before the farmer can access any beneficial actors in evaluating creditworthiness. We found a range services (Schimpf 2020). Farm management platforms often of fintech start-ups that base their services on the extrac- offer multi-tiered service packages, sometimes with a free tion and analysis of data. The start-ups Farmdrive and basic version designed to attract a critical number of users Advans both use digital technologies to assess farmers’ to capture market shares. Farm management platforms, like creditworthiness based on psychometric data as well as other digital platforms, create lock-in effects for their users, farm operations and environmental data. Both companies so that while the costs of using the platform are low or nil, claim that this digitalization of financial services will help the costs of switching to a different provider are high (for historically disenfranchised smallholder farmers to access example, due to the incompatibility of data formats). financial services. Rather than being solutions for ‘finan- In using most of the platforms we analyzed, individual cial inclusivity’ for disenfranchised populations, however, farmers hand over control of their data to the company. If research suggests that these new systems of credit scoring they can access their own data at all (many platforms do have stratifying and disciplinary tendencies (Fourcade and not disclose their back-end processes and data to customers, Healy 2017; Roderick 2014), and can contribute to differ - including information about how customers’ data is used ent neoliberal or authoritarian forms of ‘algorithmic gov- and for what purposes), they often lack the tools and capaci- ernance’ (Gruin 2019). They also rely on already estab- ties to analyze it. It is thus corporations that are benefit- lished financial infrastructures that continue to reproduce, ing from big data collection and analysis (Carbonell 2016), or even deepen, global inequalities (Bernards 2019). As leading Fraser (2019) to talk about the privatization of data such, these data-driven financial technologies perpetuate and a ‘data grab’ in digital agriculture. This is made pos- existing systems of control. sible in part through a lack of regulation. In the context of 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 649 digitalization, the law around data and privacy becomes an the large companies in the sector attribute to this digital important aspect of agricultural regulation. Recent attempts product, and how, according to Monsanto’s chief technology by the US Farm Bureau to ensure the security, ownership officer Robb Fraley, “the information itself becomes the big and protection of farmers’ data when they use farm man- business” in agriculture (McDonnell 2014). agement platforms have been undermined by corporations. Corporate control over the agri-food system is thus Bayer, for example, adjusted its End User License Agree- increasingly tied up with control over big data, which offers ment for its platform to ensure that it retains control of farm- agri-food companies the opportunity to use data to enhance ers’ data for further use (Schimpf 2020). The absence of their own products, to bind farmers more closely to the com- stricter rules currently adds to data-based corporate control panies’ products, and to extract value from selling aggre- in the agri-food system. gated data and possibly gaining political influence. The privatization of data through farm management plat- forms offers companies several possibilities to create value. Labor and production Input providers such as Syngenta are linking their traditional products, like seeds and pesticides, ever more closely to the Farm management platforms also have the potential to (re-) farm management services they offer. Syngenta has invested shape the relationship between farm owners and farm work- heavily in the takeovers of farm management platforms in ers. Digital technologies can foster a labor model, dubbed the past five years, and claims to be the only company with ‘digital Taylorism’ or ‘Neo-Taylorism,’ that comprises access to the leading farm management platforms in the new modes of workplace surveillance, control and worker world’s top four agriculture markets: the US, Brazil, China deskilling, as well as of measurement, standardization and and Eastern Europe. Syngenta estimates that around 28 quantification of work (Altenried 2020). This dynamic has million hectares of farmland are managed by its platforms. so far only been identified for other economic sectors, how - However, Syngenta’s chief information and digital officer ever we believe that farm management platforms offer the explained in an interview that Syngenta does not believe necessary tools to introduce digital Taylorism to the farm. that it can make money from selling the software to farm- The John Deere Operation Center, for example, offers a ers; instead, the company sees farm management platforms detailed machine location history, semi-standardized com- as accompanying its core products in crop protection and munication with operators and detailed ‘performance’ analy- seeds (Rana 2020). Thus, Syngenta is using the data it col- sis, including live performance tracking of different fields, lects to optimize its products and gain an advantage over its which allow for the comprehensive surveillance of farm competitors. Simultaneously, it is creating further lock-in machinery operators as well as a further standardization of effects for farmers, such as when Syngenta inputs no longer their tasks. Furthermore, farm management platforms offer work without the platform and vice-versa, or when platforms several services that might lead to a deskilling of both farm provide strong incentives to grow a particular crop to which workers and farmers themselves, such as decision-support the technology is best adapted (see also Carolan 2020). systems and agronomic advice (see also Carolan 2020), as The collection of data through farm management plat- well as guidance and steering systems that automate many forms also offers the opportunity to compile a large aggre- of the processes and decisions that farm machinery operators gated data set on farming that might be sold to different farm previously made autonomously. We found several start-ups input suppliers, agronomists and machinery firms, but also offering agronomic advice, such as pest diagnosis and phe- to national and international agricultural political institu- notyping, targeted at small-scale farmers via low-tech ICT tions. Start-ups like SatSure or MyCrop offer policy con- such as mobile phones and simple apps. This could lead sultancy based on the farm data they collect. Thus, the ‘data to a further marginalization of the cultural and ecological grab’ might not just influence company-farmer relations, but knowledge of small-scale farmers, when their knowledge could also have an influence on policy-making. is replaced by data analytics and/or AI. However, while our Our data shows that all of the large agro-chemical and data shows that farm management platforms and other data- agro-machinery companies have taken over or developed at based agronomic services could possibly alter agricultural least one farm management platform. Next to Syngenta and labor and knowledge, whether this is the case, and at what its four platforms, Bayer is an important player through its scale, requires further empirical investigation. ownership of Climate Field View, which in 2018 had more Debates on the third food regime tend to focus solely on than 100,000 registered clients in the US, Canada and Bra- farm labor. What our analysis shows, however, is that digi- zil, who together farm about 120 million acres (Carbonell talization is also very likely to change labor in other sections 2016; McDonnell 2014). Climate Field View is compatible of the commodity chain. Amazon’s ambitions, for example, with the farm management tools offered by John Deere and to establish cashier-free stores may change the labor mar- AGCO. CLAAS as well as BASF and Corteva Agriscience ket in the retail sector, whereby jobs are lost and supermar- also own such platforms. This indicates the importance that ket labor restructured, possibly exacerbating intersectional 1 3 650 L. Prause et al. inequalities by disproportionately affecting low-skilled be difficult for smaller producers to pay for certification or workers and women. Automated, networked and roboticized access the required technological tools. warehouses like those of Ocado, combined with increased Nevertheless, digital technologies are not necessarily det- e-commerce and grocery delivery, seem to suggest that labor rimental for small-scale agriculture. Some companies are in food storage and logistics facilities might be taking on developing digital products tailored to the needs of agro- characteristics of the digital Taylorist working conditions ecological farmers. In East Africa, the start-up WeFarm that are already established in Amazon warehouses. claims to have set up the largest farmer-to-farmer digital net- Regarding agricultural production, we believe that digiti- work, with more than 1 million users in Kenya and Uganda. zation will deepen existing tendencies towards an increased WeFarm allows farmers to share questions, information gap in terms of profitability between small- and large-scale and advice, and might thus strengthen local agricultural agriculture. From the 137 products that we found for the knowledge rather than marginalize it. The German-based input and farm levels, most were developed for large-scale company Rucola Soft offers a planning tool for vegetable industrial farming, such as guidance systems, (semi-)autono- cultivation customized to the needs of community supported mous tractors and harvest robots. The latter are intended to agriculture. The freeware and open source solution FarmOS decrease the need for farm labor even further, while increas- is designed for and can benefit smallholders. Several other ing the productivity of large-scale farms (e.g. Harvest Croo similar solutions, such as AgXChange, IsoBlue, FarmLogs, Robotics 2020). the OpenAg Data Alliance and the Open Food Network, Our findings also indicate that the use of digital tech- enable farmers to stay independent of large corporations and nologies at the farm level might be driven by a partial re- to regain or maintain data sovereignty in deciding how their regulation of agriculture and food production that we are data is shared (Carbonell 2016; Fraser 2019). Moreover, dig- currently witnessing as part of the transitional tendencies ital infrastructures have the potential to facilitate trans-local of the third food regime. China, for example, amended its food movements and the sharing of place-based knowledge food safety laws in 2015 and established a new food safety for the benefit of farmers and food sovereignty groups (Santo administration (Kuhlmann et al 2019). Germany has passed and Moragues-Faus 2019). new regulations regarding the use of fertilizers in order to While digital technologies that are developed for and ide- comply with the European Commission’s requirements on ally with the help of small-scale farmers might bring some groundwater quality. In 2019, the European Court of Justice improvements for family farmers, our analysis suggests that classified new genome editing techniques as conventional digitalization does not signal a general departure from the genetic engineering, in order to ensure food safety and the large-scale industrialized and fossil fuel-dependent agricul- protection of human health and the environment, in line tural model characteristic of the third food regime. Even with the precautionary principle (Andersen and Schreiber though agriculture is responsible for 20% of global green- 2020). Furthermore, social movements have in the past years house gas emissions (FAO 2020a) and has become a focal strategically mobilized against bi- or multilateral free trade point of international political regulation around the climate agreements, which in light of the malaise of the WTO have crisis, it is unlikely that digitalization will bring about a become an even more important feature of international more sustainable model of agriculture. trade, in order to demand the integration of social, environ- mental and safety standards, particularly with regard to food imports. Such demands have, for example, been partially Conclusion incorporated into the recent proposal for the EU-Mercosur trade agreement (Ghiotto and Echaide 2019). Our analysis has shown that the digitalization of food In this context of an attempted (if still partial) re-reg- production is a phenomenon along the entire commodity ulation of the farming sector and aspects of international chain. To understand the impacts of digitalization on the food trade, digital technologies, particularly farm man- organization of the agri-food system, we believe it is cru- agement platforms and digital supply chain technologies, cial to overcome the current debate’s tendency to focus on might become an important tool for farmers to generate digitalization at the input and farm level. One reason why proof that they have complied with regulatory frameworks. such a broader approach is largely missing might be that Such features are already provided by a number of digi- digitalization along the food commodity chain seems to be tal service providers, for example the platform 365Farm. discussed under different terms and in different strands of net by CLAAS, and organizations such as the OECD are the literature. Genome editing is generally discussed as bio- pushing for the digitalization of border agencies and cer- technology; automation, robotics, IoT, AI and digitalization tification mechanisms to facilitate international food trade in the food processing and packaging sector are referred (Jouanjean 2019). This might result in the further exclusion to as industry 4.0; while similar technologies at the farm of small-scale producers from certain markets, since it could level are referred to as smart farming or agriculture 4.0. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 651 Bringing these three strands of the literature together might – a trend that might be reinforced by the Covid-19 pandemic. be a first step in furthering inquiries into the future of food Digitalization seems to facilitate the stronger participation of production. tech companies in the agri-food system in general. Many of Using the third food regime as our analytical lens shows the large tech firms such as Amazon, Microsoft and Alibaba that claims about a new revolution in agriculture and food are now offering products at other stages in the food com- production are exaggerated. If we look at the organizing modity chain. Our data shows that Chinese tech companies principles of the third food regime, we can see that many in particular are emerging as important actors in the agri- have been kept in place. Supermarkets are intensifying their food system. The importance of China in the transition of control over food producers and commodity chains, for the third food regime has been noted elsewhere (McMichael instance via digital supply chain technologies. Green nar- 2019; Belesky and Lawrence 2018), yet the growing involve- ratives are still used by retailers to market their products, ment and power of Chinese tech companies has so far gone and they are now supported through, and used to legitimize, largely unnoticed. digital technologies, by stressing their alleged contribu- In terms of labor and production, we found that the flex- tion to environmental sustainability across the commodity ible and precarious conditions of labor typical of the third chain, not least as a selling point to attract consumers. This food regime might be deepened if robotics reduce the need focus on environmental sustainability constitutes a residual for farm laborers and, as such, their bargaining power and feature of the third food regime, yet it is increasingly com- political support (see also Carolan 2019). Our data also sug- bined with a focus on digital technologies in the notion of gests that digital technologies might enable new forms of ‘climate-smart agriculture.’ Financialization has been dis- digital Taylorism on the fields and in greenhouses and food cussed as another key trait of the third food regime. Finan- storage by increasing surveillance and new forms of work cial investors are driving the development of many digital standardization, as well as farmers’ reliance on data-based technologies through large investments in digital agriculture advice. This might lead to a deskilling of (farm) laborers and start-ups. Furthermore, financial capital facilitates vertical a loss of agricultural and ecological knowledge. integration and mergers, and the takeover by large agri-food In a context where the neoliberal paradigm of the third and tech companies of smaller companies offering digital food regime is fragmenting, we are currently witnessing the technologies such as farm management platforms. Finally, start of a re-regulation of the agriculture and food sector, agri-food companies are increasingly adopting the logic particularly in the EU, due to concerns over the climate cri- of finance capital to establish venture capital arms of their sis and food safety. Standards and regulations might become own to invest in promising start-ups. We therefore found a further driver of digitalization: if farmers and food traders that the close ties between financialization and corporate have to prove their compliance with complex national or control over food production also hold true for the develop- EU policies and bi- and multilateral trade agreements, digi- ment and use of new digital technologies. As our analysis tal technologies might become a prerequisite to provide the shows, big tech and major agri-food companies dominate the necessary information. technologies along the entire food commodity chain, from Finally, we identified a new tendency for data to be used intellectual property rights for a new generation of GMO by agri-food companies to generate value and increase con- seeds, through farm management platforms, to the estab- trol over farmers. As Fraser (2019) states, land grabs are now lishment of automated warehouses and consumption solu- accompanied by data grabs, when companies collect and use tions. Thus, there is very little to indicate that digitalization large amounts of previously proprietary, private or unused will bring about profound changes in the dominant model of agricultural data through farm management platforms, food production or the functioning and distribution of profits digital marketplaces and digital supply chain technologies. along global commodity chains. Since many of the digital More democratic alternatives such as open source platforms technologies we analyzed were capital-intensive and often remain marginalized, not least because they lack capital to targeted at large-scale agriculture, we believe furthermore fully compete with proprietary systems. that the opposition between small-scale agro-ecological Based on the digital technologies we analyzed in this farming and large-scale industrial farming will be fortified article, we see digitalization as taking on a twofold role in by digitalization. the current food regime. On the one hand, we believe that Our analysis does, however, show that digital technolo- digitalization is deepening some of the existing and still gies are contributing to certain transitions of the third food relatively stable characteristics of the third food regime. As regime. At the retail end, we see tech companies increas- a continuation of the importance of ICTs, which enabled ingly moving into the sector based on digital technologies global commodity chains in the first place, digitalization such as e-commerce platforms and GPS for delivery logis- allows for even stronger control by the retail sector over food tics. This is transforming the retail market, as e-commerce production and consumption (even as traditional supermar- provides an important alternative to traditional supermarkets kets face growing competition from internet-based tech 1 3 652 L. Prause et al. and Karina Rosenthal for their support of the data collection and Zoe companies) and increased efficiency along the chain. On the Goldstein for her excellent language edits. other hand, we believe that digital technologies also add to the transitional tendencies of the regime. We understand the Funding Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt incorporation of digital technologies into the agri-food sec- DEAL. This work was supported by the BMBF as part of the funding tor as part of a broader restructuring towards ‘digital capital- line ‘Bioeconomy as Societal Change’ FKZ 031B0750. ism,’ which Staab (2019, p. 43) argues is characterized by Data availability Data collection for this article was conducted by the a system of proprietary markets and the commodification three authors of this paper through the review of reports and online of data that is about to replace the neoliberal free market research on agri-food companies. An overview of the reports analyzed paradigm. We see agri-food companies increasingly attempt- for this paper is included as supplementary material. ing to establish such business models alongside their tradi- tional strategies. This is evidenced in the fierce competition Compliance with ethical standards to attract users to farm management platforms and online marketplaces, and to establish a monopoly over the ‘market’ Conflict of interests The authors have no conflicts of interest to de- clare. of farmers and the buyers of agricultural products. Agri-food companies have started to extract value from the data they collect and to use digital technologies to lock-in farmers into their own product ecosystems (e.g. through farm inputs or machinery), without facing effective government regulation regarding the protection of farmers’ data. Furthermore, digi- tal tech companies are moving into the agri-food sector. At a Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attri- stage of capitalist development where large tech companies bution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adapta- like Amazon and Google are the most profitable and power - tion, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, ful corporate entities, and digital tech capital is becoming provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes ever more important, it is only logical that these actors are were made. The images or other third party material in this article are also increasingly shaping the production and consumption included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated of food. Finally, going ‘digital’ or ‘smart’ is becoming a otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not hegemonic model of economic and social development, in permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will the agri-food system and beyond (Srnicek 2017). This nar- need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a rative, when combined with the ‘green’ imperative identified copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. by Friedmann (2005), has led to the notion of ‘climate-smart agriculture.’ This logic has been internalized by state actors and multilateral institutions, who legitimize their financial References and political support for digital developments along the food commodity chain by citing environmental, climate and food Altenried, M. 2020. The platform as factory: Crowdwork and the hid- safety issues. This poses an important challenge to the con- den labour behind artificial intelligence. Capital & Class 44 (2): cept of agro-ecology favored by peasant movements around 145–158. https ://doi.org/10.1177/03098 16819 89941 0. the globe (Newell and Taylor 2017). Andersen, E., and K. Schreiber. 2020. “Genome Editing” vor dem EuGH und seine Folgen. NuR (Natur und Recht) 42: 99–106. Finally, our research suggests that questions of data sov- Belesky, P., and G. Lawrence. 2018. Chinese state capitalism and ereignty versus data privatization might become a site of neomercantilism in the contemporary food regime: Contradic- political tension in the transition of the third food regime tions, continuity and change. The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 due to the growing role of data throughout the food com- (6): 1119–1141. https://doi.or g/10.1080/03066150.2018.14502 42 . Bernards, N. 2019. The poverty of fintech? Psychometrics, credit modity chain. While this has not been our main focus, future infrastructures, and the limits of financialization. Review of research should pay close attention to the challenges and International Political Economy 26 (5): 815–838. https ://doi. opportunities of the digitalization of the agri-food sector org/10.1080/09692 290.2019.15977 53. for peasant movements, as well as to the development of Bernstein, H. 2015. Food regimes and food regime analysis: A selective survey. Paper presented at the land grabbing, conflict and agrar - digital alternatives, such as software products developed ian‐environmental transformations: Perspectives from East and specifically for agro-ecological farming and digital farming Southeast Asia, Chiang Mai University. communities, as well as those designed around the concepts Bronson, K., and I. Knezevic. 2016. Big Data in food and agriculture. of open source access and data sovereignty. Big Data & Society 3 (1): 1–5. https ://doi.org/10.1177/20539 51716 64817 4. Acknowledgements We thank Miriam Boyer, Franziska Kusche und Burch, D., and G. Lawrence. 2009. Towards a third food regime: Camila Moreno for comments on an earlier draft of this paper. We also Behind the transformation. Agriculture and Human Values 26: thank Friederike Engelbrecht-Bock, Alonso Ignacio Gonzalez Marentis 267–279. https ://doi.org/10.1007/s1046 0-009-9219-4. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 653 Cameron, D. 2017. DuPont pioneer and broad institute join forces to Friedland, W. 1984. Commodity systems analysis: An approach to the enable democratic CRISPR Licensing in Agriculture. Broad Insti- sociology of agriculture. Research in Rural Sociology and Devel- tute. www.broad insti tute.org. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. opment 1: 221–235. Carbonell, I.M. 2016. The ethics of big data in big agriculture. Internet Friedland, W. 2001. Reprise on commodity system methodology. Policy Review 5 (1): 1–13. https ://doi.org/10.14763 /2016.1.405. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 9 Cargill. n.d. GPS Mapping: Increasing transparency on the ground. (1): 82–102. Cargill. https ://www.cargi ll.com/susta inabi lity/cocoa /gps-mappi Friedmann, H. 1991. Changes in the international division of labor: ng. Accessed 18 June 2020. Agri-food complexes and export agriculture. In Towards a New Carolan, M. 2018. Big data and food retail: Nudging out citizens by Political Economy of Agriculture, ed. W. Friedland, L. Busch, F. creating dependent consumers. Geoforum 90: 142–150. https :// Buttel, and A. Rudy, 65–93. Boulder: Westview Press. doi.org/10.1016/j.geofo rum.2018.02.006. Friedmann, H. 2005. From colonialism to green capitalism: Social Carolan, M. 2019. Automated agrifood futures: Robotics, labor and movements and emergence of food regimes. In New Directions the distributive politics of digital agriculture. The Journal of in the Sociology of Global Development, ed. F. Buttel and P. Peasant Studies 47 (1): 184–207. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 McMichael, 227–264. UK: Emerald Group Publishing Limited. 150.2019.15841 89. Friedmann, H., and P. McMichael. 1989. Agriculture and the state Carolan, M. 2020. Acting like an algorithm: Digital farming plat- system: The rise and decline of national agricultures, 1870 to forms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in. Agriculture the present. Sociologia Ruralis 29 (2): 93–117. https ://doi. and Human Values. https://doi.or g/10.1007/s10460-020-10032 -w .org/10.1111/j.1467-9523.1989.tb003 60.x. Dixon, J. 1999. A cultural economy model for studying food sys- Ghiotto, L. and J. Echaide. 2019. Analysis of the agreement between tems. Agriculture and Human Values 16: 151–160. https ://doi. the European Union and the Mercosur. Berlin, Buenos Aires, org/10.1023/A:10075 31129 846. Brussels: The Greens/EFA and PowerShift. https ://www.annac Dörr, F. 2018. Food regimes, corporate concentration and its implica- a vazz ini.eu/wp-conte nt/uploa ds/2020/01/Summa r y-EU-Mer co tions for decent work. In Decent Work Deficits in Southern Agri-sur-Luciana-Ghio tt o-Javier -Echaide.pdf . Accessed 14 Sept 2020. culture: Measurements, Drivers and Strategies, ed. C. Scherrer Gruin, J. 2019. Financializing authoritarian capitalism: Chinese and S. Verma, 178–208. Augsburg, München: Rainer Hampp fintech and the institutional foundations of algorithmic gov - Verlag. er nance. Finance and Society 5 (2): 84–104. https ://doi. ETC Group. 2019. Plate techtonics: Mapping corporate power in big org/10.2218/finso c.v5i2.4135. food: Corporate concentration by sector and industry rankings Harvest Croo Robotics. 2020. Why Harvest CROO Robotics? https by 2018 revenue. https ://etcgr oup.org/sites /www.etcgr oup.org/://harve stcro o.com/about /#why-autom ation . Accessed 19 June files /files /e tc_plate techt onics _a4_nov20 19_web.pdf. Accessed 2020. 18 June 2020. Indigo Agriculture. 2017. Indigo announces first closing of $156M European Commission. 2019. EU Member States join forces on digi- in series D, doubling capital raised to over $300M. Indigoag. talisation for European agriculture and rural areas. https://ec.eur op com. https://www .indigoag.com/pag es/ne ws/indigo-annou nces- a.eu/digit al-singl e-marke t/en/news/eu-membe r-state s-join-force first-closi ng-of-156-m-in-ser ies-d-fundi ng-r ound. A ccessed 19 s-digit alisa tion-europ ean-agric ultur e-and-rural -areas . Accessed June 2020. 18 August 2020. Indigo Agriculture. 2020. Indigo closes $200M financing to support FAO. 2020a. The contribution of agriculture to greenhouse gas emis- continued growth of its platforms, including Indigo Grain Mar- sions. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. ketplace and Indigo Carbon. Indigoag.com. https ://www.indig https ://www.fao.org/econo mic/ess/envir onmen t/data/emiss ion-oag.com/pages /news/indig o-close s-200m-finan cing. Accessed share s/en/. Accessed 18 June 2020. 19 June 2020. FAO. 2020b. Realizing the potential of digitalization to improve the IPES-Food. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega- agri-food system: Proposing a new international digital council for mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food food and agriculture. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization sector. www.ipes-food.org. Accessed 18 June 2020. of the United Nations. https://www .fao.org/3/ca7485en/ca748 5en. Jessop, S., and L. Burger. 2019. Top shareholder won’t back pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. Bayer management in AGM vote. Reuters. https ://www.reute Farmforce. n.d. Farmforce in a nutshell. Farmforce.com. https ://farmf rs.com/artic le/us-bayer -share holde r/black rock-will-not-back- orce.com/produ ct/. Accessed 18 June 2020. ba y er -manag ement -in-agm-v o te-sour c es-idUSK CN1RZ 1A8. Fourcade, M., and K. Healy. 2017. Seeing like a market. Socio-Eco- Accessed 18 June 2020. nomic Review 15 (1): 9–29. https://doi.or g/10.1093/ser/mww033 . Jouanjean, M.-A. 2019. Digital opportunities for trade in the agricul- Fraser, A. 2019. Land grab/data grab: Precision agriculture and its new ture and food sectors. OECD Food, Agriculture and Fisheries horizons. The Journal of Peasant Studies 46 (5): 893–912. https Papers. Paris: OECD. https ://doi.org/10.1787/91c40 e07-en ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 150.2017.14158 87. Kitchin, R. 2014. Big data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Fraser, A. 2020. The digital revolution, data curation, and the new Big Data & Society 1 (1): 1–12. https ://doi.org/10.1177/20539 dynamics of food sovereignty construction. The Journal of 51714 52848 1. Peasant Studies 47 (1): 208–226. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 Klerkx, L., and D. Rose. 2020. Dealing with the game-changing tech- 150.2019.16025 22. nologies of Agriculture 4.0: How do we manage diversity and Freidberg, S. 2020. Assembled but unrehearsed: Corporate food power responsibility in food system transition pathways? Global Food and the ‘dance’ of supply chain sustainability. The Journal of Security 24: 100347. https://doi.or g/10.1016/j.gfs.2019.100347 . Peasant Studies 47 (2): 383–400. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 Klerkx, L., E. Jakku, and P. Labarthe. 2019. A review of social sci- 150.2018.15348 35. ence on digital agriculture, smart farming and agriculture 4.0: Friedrich, B., S. Hackfort, M. Boyer, and D. Gottschlich. 2019. Con- New contributions and a future research agenda. NJAS Wage- flicts over GMOs and their contribution to food democracy. Poli- ningen Journal of Life Sciences 90–91: 100315. https ://doi. tics and Governance 7 (4): 165–177. https ://doi.org/10.17645 /org/10.1016/j.njas.2019.10031 5. pag.v7i4.2082. Kuhlmann, K., M. Wand, and Y. Zhou. 2019. Assessment of regu- lation of food safety in e-commerce: Global good regulatory practices and implications for China’s regime. New Markets 1 3 654 L. Prause et al. Lab. https ://www .syng e nt afo undat ion.or g/sites /g/files /zhg57 Rana, S. 2020. Interview: Syngenta’s digital offerings will effectively 6/f/2019/08/12/assessment _of_r egulation _of_f ood_safety_in_e- accompany its core CP/seed products. Agrow. https://ag row.ag rib comme r ce_-_g loba l_good_r egul at or y _pr act ices_june_2019. usine ssint ellig ence.infor ma.com/AG032 365/Inter vie w-Syng e pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020.ntas-digital -offering s-will-effecti vely -accompa ny-its-core-CPsee Kumar, D. 2018. Top e-commerce companies move into retail. d-produ cts. Accessed 18 June 2020. GRAIN. https ://www.grain .org/en/artic le/5957-top-e-comme Roderick, L. 2014. Discipline and power in the digital age: The case of rce-compa nies-move-into-retai l. Accessed 18 June 2020. the US consumer data-broker industry. Critical Sociology 40 (5): Lang, T., and P. Wiggins. 1985. The industrialisation of the U.K. 729–746. https ://doi.org/10.1177/08969 20513 50135 0. food system: From production to consumption. In The Indus- Rotz, S., E. Gravely, I. Mosby, E. Duncan, E. Finnis, M. Horgan, J. trialisation of the Countryside, edited by M. J. Healey, and B. LeBlanc, et al. 2019. Automated pastures and the digital divide: W. Ilbery, 45–56. Norwich: Geobooks. How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural com- Lezoche, M., J.E. Hernandez, M. Del Mar Alemany, H.Panetto Díaz, munities. Journal of Rural Studies 68: 112–122. https ://doi. and J. Kacprzyk. 2020. Agri-food 4.0: A survey of the supply org/10.1016/j.jrurs tud.2019.01.023. chains and technologies for the future agriculture. Computers Santo, R., and A. Moragues-Faus. 2019. Towards a trans-local food in Industry 117: 103187. governance: Exploring the transformative capacity of food policy Magnan, A. 2012. Food regimes. In The Oxford Handbook of Food assemblages in the US and UK. Geoforum 98: 75–87. https://doi. History Online, ed. J.M. Pilcher, 370–389. Oxford: Oxford Uni-org/10.1016/j.geofo rum.2018.10.002. versity Press. Schimpf, M. 2020. Can digital farming really address the systemic McDonnell, T. 2014. Monsanto is using big data to take over the causes of agriculture’s impact on the environment and society, or world. Mother Jones. https://www .mot her jones.com/en vironmen will it entrench them? Brussels: Friends of the Earth Europe. https t/2014/11/monsa nto-big-data-gmo-clima te-chang e/. Accessed ://www.foeeu rope.org/sites /defau lt/files /gmos/2020/foee-digit al- 18 June 2020.farmi ng-paper -feb-2020.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. McMichael, P. 2009. A food regime analysis of the ‘world food cri- Somerville, H. 2017. Farming startup Indigo raises $203 million with sis’. Agriculture and Human Values 26 (4): 281–295. https ://doi. help from Dubai fund. Reuters. https ://www.reute rs.com/artic le/ org/10.1007/s1046 0-009-9218-5. us- indig o-f undr a isin g /far mi ng -s t a r t up -indig o- r ais e s- 203-m illi McMichael, P. 2012. The land grab and corporate food regime restruc-on-with-help-from-dubai -fund-idUSK BN1E0 1PK. Accessed 19 turing. The Journal of Peasant Studies 39 (3–4): 681–701. https: // June 2020. doi.org/10.1080/03066 150.2012.66136 9. Srnicek, N. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, Malden: Polity McMichael, P. 2019. Does China’s ‘going out’ strategy prefigure a new Press. food regime? The Journal of Peasant Studies 47 (1): 116–154. Staab, P. 2019. Digitaler Kapitalismus: Markt und Herrschaft in der https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 150.2019.16933 68. Ökonomie der Unknappheit. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Mitchell, C. 2019. How an ag company most people have never heard Then, C. 2019. Neue Gentechnikverfahren und Pflanzenzucht: Patente- of could prove itself more disruptive than Netflix or Airbnb. The Kartell für große Konzerne. In Rundbrief 2, Ed. Forum Umwelt Counter. https://t hecounter .or g/indigo-ag ricultur e-disr up tive-s tart und Entwicklung, 10–13. up/. Accessed 18 June 2020. Thomasson, E. 2019. Carrefour says blockchain tracking boosting Mooney, P. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega- sales of some products. Reuters. https ://www.reute rs.com/artic mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food le/us-carre four-block chain /carre four-says-block chain -track ing- sector. IPES-Food. https ://www.ipes-food.org/_img/uploa d/files /boost ing-sales -of-some-produ cts-idUSK CN1T4 2A5. Accessed Conce ntrat ion_FullR eport .pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. 18 June 2020. Nestlé. 2019. Lagebericht. Veyvey: Nestlé. https://www .nestle.de/sites Tilzey, M. 2019. Food regimes, capital, state, and class: Friedmann and /g/files /p ydno a391/files /2020-03/N es tl %C3%A9%2520G lobal McMichael revisited. Sociologia Ruralis 59 (2): 230–254. https:// %2520R eport %25202 019.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. doi.org/10.1111/soru.12237. Newell, P., and O. Taylor. 2017. Contested landscapes: The global Trendov, N. M., S. Varas, and M. Zeng. 2019. Digital technologies in political economy of climate-smart agriculture. The Journal of agriculture and rural areas: Status report. Rome: Food and Agri- Peasant Studies 45 (1): 108–129. https ://doi.org/10.1080/03066 culture Organization of the United Nations. https://www .fao.org/3/ 150.2017.13244 26.ca498 5en/ca498 5en.pdf. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. PA Consulting. 2018. Transforming agriculture with data driven Vanderroost, M., P. Ragaert, J. Verwaeren, B. De Meulenaer, B. De insights: How to prosper in the evolving market for digital agr- Baets, and F. Devlieghere. 2017. The digitization of a food pack- itech. London: PA Consulting Group. https ://www .pacon sulti age’s life cycle: Existing and emerging computer systems in the ng.com/insigh ts/2018/digita lagri cultu re/. Accessed 14 Sept 2020. pre-logistics phase. Computers in Industry 87: 1–14. https ://doi. Patel, R. 2013. The long green revolution. The Journal of Peasant Stud-org/10.1016/j.compi nd.2017.02.002. ies 40 (1): 1–63. https://doi.or g/10.1080/03066150.2012.71922 4 . Wolfert, S., L. Ge, C. Verdouw, and M.-J. Bogaardt. 2017. Big data in Pechlaner, G., and G. Otero. 2008. The third food regime: Neolib- smart farming: A review. Agricultural Systems 153: 69–80. https eral globalism and agricultural biotechnology in North Amer- ://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2017.01.023. ica. Sociologia Ruralis 48 (4): 351–371. https ://doi.org/10.111 1/j.1467-9523.2008.00469 .x. Publisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to Prause, L., and P. Le Billon. 2020. Struggles for land: Compar- jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. ing resistance movements against agro-industrial and mining investment projects. The Journal of Peasant Studies. https ://doi. org/10.1080/03066 150.2020.17621 81. Prause, L. 2020. Konflikte um die Aneignung von Land. Proteste gegen Louisa Prause is a post-doctoral researcher at the department of agri- industrielle Minen und agrarindustrielle Projekte im Senegal. cultural economics, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin and part of the Wiesbaden: Springer VS. research group Biomaterialities. Her research focuses on the transfor- Pritchard, B. 2009. Food regimes. In International Encyclopedia mation of rural spaces and rural labor relations through digitalization, of Human Geography, ed. R. Kitchin and N. Thrift, 221–225. land conflicts, socio-ecological transformations, social movements and Oxford: Elsevier. 1 3 Digitalization and the third food regime 655 the bioeconomy. Her research takes place in Western Africa, South are new technologies and democracy, politics of food and agriculture, Africa and in Germany. feminist theory and political ecology. Sarah Hackfort is a post-doctoral researcher at Humboldt-Universität Margit Lindgren is a Ph.D. candidate in the Biomaterialities research zu Berlin at the department of agricultural economics. She is lead- group at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. She has experi- ing the research group BioMaterialities that analyzes transformations ence in strategic research for trade unions and is currently focusing her in production, reproduction and politics in the unfolding bioeconomy doctoral research on intersectional environmental and labor struggles from a critical social sciences perspective. Her major research interests in the Bioeconomy. 1 3

Journal

Agriculture and Human Values – Springer Journals

Published: Sep 1, 2021

Keywords: Food regime; Digital agriculture; Agri-food system; Food commodity chain; Agrarian labor; Digital platforms

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Digitalization and the third food regime

Digitalization and the third food regime

Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Digitalization and the third food regime

Digitalization and the third food regime

References (103)

Abstract

Journal

Recommended Articles

There are no references for this article.

Our policy towards the use of cookies