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By ETC Group

ETC Group is a small, international, research and action collective committed to social and environmental justice, human rights and the defence of just and ecological agri-food systems and the web of life. We focus on understanding and challenging corporate-controlled techno-industrial systems and exposing the dangers of the technological manipulation of life, especially in relation to climate justice and food security. We uphold peasant and indigenous ways of life and knowledge systems; food sovereignty; people’s control of technology; and just economies and governance.

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Who Will control the Food System: episode 4

ETC Group podcastsMar 26, 2024

00:00
47:50
Who Will control the Food System: episode 4

Who Will control the Food System: episode 4

Growing carbon is not like growing watermelons: the seductive trap of carbon farming and digital tech

(To read the transcript go to: https://www.etcgroup.org/tags/podcast)

Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

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In this fourth episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Camila Moreno, an independent researcher who works with social movements in Brazil and across Latin America on the social and environmental dimensions of biotechnology and agribusiness expansion.

Camila presents Brazil as a huge agribusiness hub, well established as the centre of the “United Republic of Soybeans”, an expression she borrows from a Syngenta ad that references the whole southern cone of the Americas. 

In this podcast, she explains how the “war against climate change” is being manipulated by the financial sector and agribusiness to impose digitalization on Brazilian farms, big and small alike, at an even faster pace than in the US. Carbon is at the centre of this “new climate economy”, and it is digitalisation that is supposedly enabling invisible, intangible carbon to be measured and thereby transformed into a commodity that can be bought and traded.

This has been coupled with strong new corporate narratives about ‘regenerative agriculture’ and environmental markets 'resetting' nature. These so-called 'environmental services' are now established on global markets: carbon credits, biodiversity credits, water credits can all be bought and sold... 

This new trend is changing the very identity of farmers. Where they might have grown watermelon, some are now farming carbon. Farmers struggling to compete with giant corporate farms and supermarkets are being lured into carbon farming with the promise of a new stream of income combined with the chance of being part of a cool, ‘high tech’ economy, with sensors and apps. This is an image which is being heavily promoted by private companies, governments and even international institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Even popular TV soap operas in Brazil are promoting the seductive power of drones in rural areas.

But far from the spotlight, we can see that carbon farming comes with many pitfalls and risks which need to be considered, including the involuntary integration of family farms into the Industrial Food Chain, the loss of farmers’ autonomy, new surveillance mechanisms and new reasons for land grabbing. 

Listen in as we explore these questions!

To find out more about the digitalization of food and agriculture you can also watch our animation “Big Brother is Coming to the Farm: the Digital Takeover of Food” (available here in Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Swahili – and with versions in Arabic, Bisaya, Filipino, Hindi and Portuguese on the way).

Mar 26, 202447:50
Who Will control the Food System: episode 3

Who Will control the Food System: episode 3

Disruptive digital food and ag techs are invading indigenous territories in India.

(To read the transcript go to: https://www.etcgroup.org/tags/podcast)

Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

---

In East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India, an Adivasi farmer gave his personal data and information, including his telephone number, to a representative of the Indian government. In India, “adivasi” is a collective term used to refer to indigenous people.

The farmer later learnt that this information was made public and embedded in a GIS map. He was also made to join a Farmer Producer Group and was part of a platform called Producers Market which claims to facilitate direct relationships between consumers and producers using emerging technologies and digital devices, protecting farmers from small traders who are supposedly ‘exploiting’ them. The farmer was made to believe that this project was good for him as well as for agribusiness companies.

But was it?

Just how and why are big data and tech in agriculture moving into the territories of indigenous people in India without their knowledge or consent?

How is the sustainability narrative being flipped by big business to penalise people living in the forests and reliant on shifting agriculture?

And how are agribusiness corporations planning to squeeze small food traders out of the food supply chain?

In our third episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Sagari R Ramdas, a member of the Food Sovereignty Alliance in India, about the impact of disruptive technologies in indigenous territories in India. Sagari is a veterinary scientist and a popular educator at the Kudali Learning Centre, where she facilitates education programs in social justice, food sovereignty and buen vivir. She writes and works on issues related to social justice, food sovereignty, livestock and ecological governance.

Listen in as we explore these questions!

To find out more about the digitalisation of food and agriculture you can also watch our animation “Big brother is Coming to the Farm: the Digital Takeover of Food” (available here in Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Swahili – and with versions in Arabic, Bisaya, Filipino, Hindi, and Portuguese on the way).


Mar 26, 202436:49
Who Will Control the Food System: episode 2

Who Will Control the Food System: episode 2

The “Immaculate Conception of Data” – and why it’s a problem

(To read the transcript go to: https://www.etcgroup.org/tags/podcast)

Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, 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, about her research 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. Critically, 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. Rather, when a farmer purchases a tractor from a farm machinery company such as John Deere the farmer only receives a “license to operate the vehicle.” It is the company, Deere, that owns all of it.

Not only that, but the farmer also has to pay (in addition to paying to use the tractor) for automated data services or data support services that will provide him with technical advice – which the farmer must follow – on what, when and how to plant in his own field. 

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? 

In this second episode Zahra Moloo and Kelly Bronson talk about Bronson's new book, “The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their Shared Politics of the Future.”

Listen in as we explore these questions!


Mar 26, 202444:06
Who will control the food system? episode 1

Who will control the food system? episode 1

Industrial agriculture is not so much jumping on the “Food Systems Transformation” band wagon as trying to steal it!

(To read the transcript go to: https://www.etcgroup.org/tags/podcast)

Don’t fall for the UN’s new Food Systems Coordination Hub hype about “Transforming Food Systems for Planetary Health”. The current corporate agenda, championed by this new “Hub” is firmly focused on hijacking the UN’s existing food systems spaces to force through yet another phase of Industrial Agriculture – promoting its technofixes as solutions to the very problems that it itself has caused, including in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss.

Tune into our latest podcast mini-series, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

In this first episode, Zahra Moloo, Neth Daño and Kavya Chowdhry talk through a recent trend: corporations that until now had nothing to do with food but are now pouring money into it. Which corporations are these, and why and how are they jumping on the band wagon? And what are the Big Ag giants up to amidst this scenario?

Listen in as we explore these questions!


Mar 26, 202442:15
¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 1

¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 1

Los barones de la alimentación. Entrevista a Silvia Ribeiro

En esta serie de podcast del Grupo ETC, hablaremos de quién controla lo que comemos, y cómo van cambiando las cosas en este sector.  Comentaremos sobre las empresas que ganan cada vez más terreno en el mercado de semillas, maquinaria agrícola, distribución de comestibles. Cómo es que las compañías más grandes de tecnología, como Microsoft, Alfabet, Google y AliBaba están invadiendo el sector de producción de alimentos.  Estos cambios son poco analizados, así como lo que hoy se llama “la cosecha de carbono” y la agricultura digital.  

Les esperamos para compartir lo que el Grupo ETC ha investigado sobre quién controla y quién controlará nuestra alimentación.  

En este primer episodio de Quién controla lo que comemos, hablaremos de las corporaciones clave del sistema alimentario industrial: nombres como Corteva, Cargill, Syngenta, Yara o John Deere… Qué están haciendo y por qué debemos preocuparnos. También comentaremos nuevas tendencias en la agricultura y la alimentación, como la presencia de creciente de las empresas de tecnología digital y de administración de inversiones.

Mar 26, 202427:52
¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 2

¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 2

La cadena agroalimentaria digital. Entrevista a Pepe Godoy


En esta serie de podcast del Grupo ETC, hablaremos de quién controla lo que comemos, y cómo van cambiando las cosas en este sector.  Comentaremos sobre las empresas que ganan cada vez más terreno en el mercado de semillas, maquinaria agrícola, distribución de comestibles. Cómo es que las compañías más grandes de tecnología, como Microsoft, Alfabet, Google y AliBaba están invadiendo el sector de producción de alimentos.  Estos cambios son poco analizados, así como lo que hoy se llama “la cosecha de carbono” y la agricultura digital.

Les esperamos para compartir lo que el Grupo ETC ha investigado sobre quién controla y quién controlará nuestra alimentación.

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En este segundo episodio de Quién controla lo que comemos, hablaremos de las dos perspectivas de la alimentación que analiza el Grupo ETC: por un lado, la CADENA INDUSTRIAL DE PRODUCCIÓN DE ALIMENTOS, y por otro, LAS REDES ALIMENTARIAS CAMPESINAS. 

La cadena industrial utiliza la inmensa mayoría del agua, las tierras y la energía que requiere la agricultura y sólo produce el 30 por ciento de la comida que llega a la gente. Está ampliamente documentado que una tercera parte de la comida que viene de la industria se desperdicia y que sus productos están llenos de venenos desde su origen. 

El Grupo ETC ha calculado que por cada dólar que se paga por un alimento industrializado se deben pagar otros dos dólares en daños ambientales y a la salud. Y ante los problemas, las corporaciones repiten que la cadena alimentaria agroindustrial nos ayudará a sobrevivir el caos climático, y resolver el hambre con nuevas tecnologías. 

Feb 26, 202423:14
COP15: an interview with Sabrina Masinjila

COP15: an interview with Sabrina Masinjila

In this interview, Sabrina Masinjila, from the African Centre for Biodiversity, speaks to ETC Group about some key targets in the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) being negotiated at COP15 in Montreal. She explains the importance of agroecology and agricultural diversity in Target 10 of the GBF, and why these are so important for biodiversity in the future.

Dec 19, 202213:16
COP15: An interview with Christine von Weizsäcker

COP15: An interview with Christine von Weizsäcker

Find out what's happening at the Convention on Biological Diversity's COP 15 in Montreal, with this introduction to the COP by guest interviewee Christine von Weizsäcker. You can read the full transcript of the interview over at our website at: https://www.etcgroup.org/content/cop15-audio-introduction.

Dec 08, 202215:34
Is the UN Convention on Biodiversity losing the precautionary plot?

Is the UN Convention on Biodiversity losing the precautionary plot?

The push to get untried and untested corporate-backed bio- and digital technologies accepted as ‘nature-positive solutions’ is  taking place in the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as well as climate negotiations. The long-postponed global biodiversity summit (COP-15) of the Parties to the CBD, which was supposed to take place in Kunming in China in 2020, is now taking place in Montreal in December. In Montreal a high-profile ‘Global Biodiversity Framework’ will be launched to determine the priorities for the next 30 years of biodiversity governance..

We’ve been working hard to try and ensure that the Global Biodiversity Framework and ongoing work of the Convention includes critical agreements to implement horizon scanning, technology assessment and monitoring of new and emerging technologies – especially modern biotechnologies. Governments need to give the green light to this next step in the Convention’s work, or risk undoing and undermining over a quarter century of commitments to the precautionary principle. This would, in essence, change the entire nature and ethos of the CBD and open the door to many risky and unjust technologies.

Jim Thomas, Silvia Ribeiro and Tom Wakeford will be at COP-15 in Montreal in December. In this 5-minute mini-podcast Jim outlines why horizon scanning, technology assessment and monitoring must be included in the new ‘post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework’ and the CBD’s Work Programme on Synthetic Biology.

Nov 09, 202205:08
Life, the Pluriverse and Everything

Life, the Pluriverse and Everything

In celebration of United Nations World Philosophy Day 2021, ETC Group presents its third and final podcast in the "Spanner in the System" series, focussing on the philosophical underpinnings of corporate visions for disruptive technology, together with Dr Saurabh Arora from the University of Sussex.

This podcast is part of ETC Group’s new three-part mini-series about Disruptive Technologies, produced by ETC Group in the Asia-Pacific region in collaboration with Puma Podcasts. Supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

Nov 19, 202121:05
Volcanic Disruption

Volcanic Disruption

Find out what geoengineering is, why it's so dangerous, and why the idea of these largely non-existent technologies is being used as an alibi for the fossil fuel industry to continue extracting and polluting.

Oct 29, 202123:01
Banana-drama

Banana-drama

Why not listen to our new podcast during your lunch break today? As we mark World Food Day (16 October), it’s a good time to pause and reflect on our food and where it comes from. Our first podcast, in our new mini-series on disruptive tech, produced in the Asia-Pacific region, does just that!

Together with Neth Daño, we learn about issues surrounding new technologies and their impacts on some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and what we can do about them. We look at the global food system, how we care for – and sometimes don’t care for – our land, and what needs to be done to make a better world.

This might all sound complicated, but we can start with bananas: believe it or not bananas can tell us a lot about how the world we live in works!

This podcast is part of ETC Group’s new three-part mini-series about Disruptive Technologies, produced by ETC Group in the Asia-Pacific region in collaboration with Puma Podcasts. Supported by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

Oct 18, 202121:21
Jack y el Gigante de la Nube

Jack y el Gigante de la Nube

En esta historia, seguimos a un joven campesino llamado Jack mientras  trepa una enredadera de datos que conduce al castillo de un gigante,  donde descubre lo que sucede cuando conecta su granja a las brillantes  aplicaciones y las deslumbrantes promesas de la agricultura de  precisión.

Jul 02, 202115:50
Special episode: The story of Jack and the Cloud Giant

Special episode: The story of Jack and the Cloud Giant

In this special episode of the ETC Group podcast, we're sidestepping into the world of fairy stories to celebrate World Storytelling Day 2021, which focuses on 'New Beginnings'. 'Jack and the Cloud Giant' is a twist on an old European fairy tale. We follow a young peasant called Jack up a data-vine that leads into the Cloud Giant’s techno-castle, where he finds out what happens when he plugs his farm into the glittering apps and the dazzling promises of precision agriculture. We hope you enjoy it and will share it with friends and family!

'Jack and the Cloud Giant' was written by ETC Group's Jim Thomas and narrated by Zahra Moloo. To download a copy of this podcast and to see the 'book' itself, a pdf beautifully illustrated by children's book illustrator Garth Laidlaw, visit: https://etcgroup.org/content/jack-and-cloud-giant

Mar 20, 202113:27
#7: Geoengineering and Decolonization

#7: Geoengineering and Decolonization

What kind of system of knowledge considers it a good idea to try to manipulate the whole climate of an entire planet? For our second of two episodes on geoengineering, ETC Group's Dru Jay spoke to Tom Goldtooth, who is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network about the meaning of colonization, what is called decolonization and Indigenous perspectives on geoengineering,

Nov 11, 202035:51
#6: Geoengineering and the Global South (with Silvia Ribeiro)

#6: Geoengineering and the Global South (with Silvia Ribeiro)

Who is behind schemes to block the sun and suck carbon out of the air – instead of rapidly reducing emissions?

ETC Latin America Director Silvia Ribeiro talks about who is driving the geoengineering agenda and how geoengineering will affect people and ecosystems in the Global South.

For more about Geoengineering, visit http://www.geoengineeringmonitor.org or read the Big Bad Fix (https://www.etcgroup.org/content/big-bad-fix)

Oct 02, 202022:56
#5: Algorithmic Colonisation with Abeba Birhane

#5: Algorithmic Colonisation with Abeba Birhane

In this podcast episode, ETC Group speaks to Abeba Birhane, a PhD candidate in cognitive science at University College Dublin in the School of Computer Science. Birhane talks about her work on the algorithmic colonisation of Africa, why we need to normalise critical thinking on new technologies and if there is such a thing as “ethical" AI.

Sep 18, 202020:26
#4: What is Technology? With Jim Thomas

#4: What is Technology? With Jim Thomas

Zahra Moloo asks Jim Thomas a seemingly simple question: what is technology? The answer takes us into the core of ETC's work, and the basic ideas behind our multi-decade push for Technology Assessment, and explains how "Mooney's Law" works.

Aug 01, 202033:26
#3: Which New Normal? ETC on COVID, food systems and big tech

#3: Which New Normal? ETC on COVID, food systems and big tech

This episode is also available with video.

Those backing risky new technologies are seeing growing profits and power during the COVID-19 crisis. From fast-tracking genomic testing and novel vaccines to automation of ‘people-free’ supply chains, the pandemic is benefitting Big Tech.

From the rise of Zoom and Netflix to enhanced data-surveillance of populations, Silicon Valley and its financial backers  are not only shaping how the crisis is lived, but are positioning themselves to shape behaviours and write the rules in a post-crisis new order.

At the same time, the COVID crisis has revealed the fragilities in our food systems and the ways in which we still depend on the peasant food web to sustain us. Although the pandemic has brought numerous risks, community alternatives have flourished, suggesting new ways of living and forging the future ahead.

Participants:

Verónica Villa (Mexico City, Mexico)
Zahra Moloo (Montreal, Canada)
Neth Daño (Davao, Philippines)
Jim Thomas (Val David, Canada)


May 27, 202042:54
#2: The Next Agribusiness Takeover
May 04, 202031:02
#1: Gene drive organisms in Africa

#1: Gene drive organisms in Africa

ETC's Tom Wakeford speaks with Ugandan lawyer and advocate Barbara Ntambirweki about gene drives, a powerful new genetic technology that can change species in the wild and make species go extinct.
Nov 12, 201916:39