The Challenges Digitalisation Brings to Peasant Agroecology: An ECVC perspective

How does digitalisation affect a just food system? In this publication, ECVC makes 25 recommendations to ensure that digitalisation in agriculture does not reinforce corporate power or exacerbate existing inequalities. By implementing these recommendations, digitalisation can advance food sovereignty and security. It will also help to address environmental and social crises while prioritising the needs of small-scale food producers.

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How does digitalisation affect a just food system?

Promoted as a transformative solution, digitalisation in agriculture involves the widespread use of digital tools such as AI, data science, and biotechnology to map lands, store information, and create new digital systems for managing farming. However, rather than benefiting small-scale food producers, this trend is increasingly used to entrench corporate power and facilitate the financialisation of nature through harmful mechanisms such as carbon and biodiversity credits. These approaches turn ecosystems into tradable assets and threaten the autonomy and livelihoods of small-scale farmers.

While these technologies have the potential to enhance agricultural practices, their current implementation often serves as a tool for corporate concentration. Large agribusinesses, backed by free trade agreements and inadequate public policies, use digitalisation to consolidate control over food production and distribution, marginalising small-scale farmers and threatening food sovereignty. This digital dominance prioritises profit over people, discouraging agroecological practices that are essential for sustainable food systems. At the same time, it fuels data imperialism, where information extracted from peasant communities is monetised without fair return or consent.

ECVC puts forward agroecology as a political and practical response to this model.

Agroecology values peasant knowledge, ecological principles, social equity, and local autonomy over technological imposition. While digital tools can facilitate knowledge exchange and help farmers adapt to climate challenges, they should empower farmers rather than impose external solutions. ECVC recognises that digitalisation can support agroecology but warns against technologies that undermine small-scale farmers’ autonomy and reinforce corporate control.

Prioritising the rights and needs of peasants and promoting agroecology and food sovereignty ensures that digitalisation serves to empower these central actors in the food chain, rather than exploit and displace them with dehumanising technologies.

ECVC therefore offers 25 recommendations to ensure that digitalisation in agriculture strengthens food sovereignty and supports the rights of small-scale producers, rather than deepening existing inequalities and reinforcing corporate power. It will also help to address environmental and social crises while prioritising the needs of small-scale food producers.

Technology that works for farmers, and not the other way around

ECVC calls for public policies that frame the use of technology responsibly, establish necessary limits based on the precautionary principle, and ensure that farmers maintain control over their tools and data. These policies must enable the benefits of digitalisation to be equitably distributed. This includes:

• Promoting transparency and accountability among technology providers
• Strengthening regulations to mitigate the ecological risks of digitalisation in agriculture
• Encouraging practices that enhance biodiversity, soil health, and water conservation
• Supporting the rights of peasants and food sovereignty

ECVC urges policymakers, communities, and all actors to stand in solidarity with peasants, embracing agroecology not merely as an alternative, but as the pathway to a just and sustainable future. The journey towards food sovereignty requires collective action, grassroots empowerment, and a dedicated commitment to the principles that return control to those who feed the world.

ECVC’s 25 Recommendations on Digitalisation

1. Preserve and promote peasant knowledge through participatory approaches involving local farmers and communities. Conduct comprehensive risk assessments of digital tools.
2. Adopt the precautionary principle to safeguard ecosystems and peasant farmers from potential harm.
3. Protect the rights of peasant farmers and workers, with targeted technical support for agroecology.
4. Ensure transparency of algorithms by prohibiting IP protections, digital locks, or other restrictions.
5. Guarantee farmer ownership of data; prohibit automatic or uninformed data collection.
6. Recognise Digital Sequence Information (DSI) as part of biological resources, not subject to IP rights.
7. Recognise DSI of Plant Genetic Resources as part of plant genetic resources.
8. Uphold Farmers’ Rights under Article 9 of the ITPGRFA; enforce strict GMO and seed regulations.
9. Make States responsible for collecting benefit-sharing payments under the ITPGRFA.
10. Protect small-scale farmers’ control over data; prevent corporate exploitation.
11. Avoid carbon and biodiversity markets.
12. Refrain from promoting carbon farming and biodiversity offsets; support agroecology directly.
13. Develop responsible, people-centred technology policies that prioritise farmer autonomy.
14. Redirect CAP subsidies to support small-scale farmers and agroecological practices.
15. Revise land policy frameworks to prevent land grabbing through digitalisation.
16. Ensure digital land tools prevent illegal land legitimisation and protect small-scale farmers.
17. Strengthen regulations for digital cadastre systems to ensure transparency and accountability.
18. Implement human rights impact assessments for all digital land governance projects.
19. Regulate digital land markets to prevent speculation and inequality.
20. Support young and new farmers in digital land policies.
21. Protect workers’ rights and ensure equitable access to digital benefits.
22. Support alternative mechanisation through open-source tools and second-hand markets.
23. Promote regional food networks and short supply chains to enhance food sovereignty.
24. Combat monopolies in the farming and food sectors.
25. Provide fast, affordable, and reliable internet access, addressing gender and power disparities.

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