Big tech ‘leave poor farmers sidelined’ in AI revolution

[NAIROBI, SciDev.Net] A powerful alliance of agricultural corporations and big technology companies are pricing innovation out of reach of smallholder farmers who need it most, according to a new report.

The report published Wednesday (25 February) by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) highlights how tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Alibaba are shaping the future of farming through cloud platforms and Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, attracting substantial public and private investment.

But it warns that innovation remains “deeply political”, reinforcing existing power structures and deepening farmers’ dependency on big corporations and high-cost technologies.

“These tools are expensive, highly energy- and resource-intensive […] They rely on constant connectivity and subscription models that most smallholder farmers simply cannot access.”

Lim Li Ching, co-chair, IPES-Food

Lim Li Ching is co-chair of IPES-Food, a global thinktank that advocates for sustainable global food systems, and lead author of the report, titled Head In The Cloud. She says so-called “Big Tech” and “Big Ag” are redefining innovation on their own terms.

This “unholy alliance” is dominating agriculture, funding, research, and policy with expensive and proprietary technologies, says Ching, while farmer-led, open-source, and ecological innovations, often more relevant to smallholders, are sidelined.

“This alliance creates technological lock-ins,” warned Ching, who is also a senior researcher at Third World Network, a network of global development organisations.

“Once farmers enter a proprietary digital ecosystem, it becomes difficult to leave without losing access to their own data and decision tools,” she added.

In such a scenario, innovation shifts from something farmers create to something sold to them, Ching explains. Over time, she believes this reduces diversity, creativity and autonomy within smallholder farming.

High-cost, high-energy

The report cites precision agriculture, satellite monitoring, automated livestock systems, and digital platforms backed by Big Tech cloud infrastructure as some of the innovations increasingly out of reach of ordinary farmers.

“These tools are expensive, highly energy- and resource-intensive, and designed for large industrial agriculture,” Ching told SciDev.Net.

“They rely on constant connectivity and subscription models that most smallholder farmers simply cannot access. In practice, they tend to deepen dependency rather than strengthen resilience.”

SciDev.Net did not receive a response from any of the named companies contacted for their reaction to the report.

However, a spokesperson for Bayer, a multinational specialising in healthcare and agriculture, stressed that AI and digital innovation is critical to tackling climate change and the needs of a growing global population.

“Digitalisation is the foundation of the next generation of research breakthroughs in areas like plant breeding and chemistry, a primary enabler of regenerative practices on the field,” she said.

Unpredictable and extreme weather patterns mean decision-making is becoming increasingly complex for farmers, she noted, adding that the company combines farmers’ knowledge with data-centred technologies in precision farming, crop monitoring and pest detection, to improve productivity and reduce risks.

“This expands farmers’ opportunities—and they are free in which technologies and products they choose,” she added.

The authors acknowledge that farmer-led, open-source, locally governed technologies can support smallholders, through weather information, knowledge-sharing, or market access. But they say the key is whether the technologies complement farmer knowledge and autonomy or replace it.

Data control

The report finds that when only a handful of companies control the data and algorithms behind this digital revolution, they begin to shape what farming looks like, what gets planted, how it is grown, and who decides.

They say “surveillance” of soils, seeds, and farming practices provides data that companies use to sell products, train AI systems, and generate profit, often with little transparency or accountability. Consequently, farmers are losing control over their own information, they warn.

“We also see forms of biopiracy, where traditional and Indigenous knowledge, seeds, or genetic resources are patented and commercialised, with little benefit flowing back to the communities who developed them,” Ching told SciDev.Net

Grassroots innovation

The report highlights examples of successful innovation systems that are not capital intensive or corporate controlled.

These include the Farmers’ Seed Network in China, which is linking farming communities and researchers to develop more robust and locally-adapted seeds, preserving local agrobiodiversity and improving knowledge-sharing among farmers.

It also cites the AGUAPAN initiative, supported by Dutch potato breeding companies working with farming and Indigenous communities in Peru. The project has conserved the genetic diversity of over 1,000 native potato varieties, working to ensure benefit-sharing with local communities, according to the report.

“All these innovation systems point to efforts that are farmer-driven and locally adapted,” said Ching.

“Supporting them and scaling them out would require long-term public and private funding, extension services that are able to support them, the public infrastructure required to maintain these systems, and appropriate data justice and governance frameworks.”

‘Pivotal moment’

Emmanuel Siakilo, a senior climate adaptation and resilience advisor with the African Union Commission who did not take part in the research, agrees with the report’s findings.

He says climate action, including agricultural technologies to mitigate against the effects of climate change needs to be contextually relevant even though they require a global effort to manage them. And he questions whether investment is going in the right direction.

“Have we been pumping money into adaptations that don’t necessarily work for the continent […] copy-paste kind of interventions that don’t work?” asks Siakilo.

“In Kenya where I come from for example, if we were to receive US$1 million today for climate adaptation in agriculture, where would the government be putting that money?”

He told SciDev.Net: “We don’t want to be shooting in the dark. We want to be very precise in terms of where we put adaptation money, what works, and will work if we scale so that communities start realising the benefits of these resources.”

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Global desk.