An ETC Group podcast mini-series

The ‘Immaculate Conception of Data’

In this podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, ETC Group uncovers who is pulling the strings of industrial agriculture. We dissect the latest corporate strategies and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

In this second episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Kelly Bronson, a social scientist at the University of Ottawa in Canada and the author of The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their Shared Politics of the Future. Bronson’s research looks into the secretive legal agreements surrounding agricultural big data, to trace how it is used and with what consequences. In particular, what happens when big data is embedded in pre-existing arrangements of power and corporate strategies?

Take tractors, for example. ‘Digital’ tractors are not like the vehicles of times past. They have built-in sensors that collect data and stream it to cloud-based infrastructure. The digital business model means that the farmer does not own the tractor, or the software that is embedded in the tractor, or even the data that is generated by the equipment. 

What is this data that is generated from the tractor? How is data more generally captured in the context of agriculture? Who uses it? Why doesn’t the farmer own it?

To listen: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1BeNpEBrdYJXbjy8FS5FSO