Head in the Cloud: Report Launch Webinar

Innovation in agriculture is increasingly led by Big Tech and Big Ag, embedding AI, data platforms, and automation into farming systems worldwide.

While promoted as a tool for productivity, this corporate-led digitalization is deepening farmer dependency, concentrating power over data and decision-making, and locking agriculture into costly, extractive pathways that fail to deliver resilience or equity.

At the same time, farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities worldwide are developing innovations rooted in solidarity, dignity, local knowledge, and collective learning – approaches that are affordable, adaptive, and already strengthening climate resilience, biodiversity, and rural livelihoods. But these approaches are overlooked and under-funded.

Join IPES-Food for the launch of its landmark report ‘Head In The Cloud’, exposing the false promise of digital agriculture and making the case for bottom-up, agroecological innovation systems that serve people, not profit.

Join us to explore:

• Explore the findings of our new report
• Unpack the politics of agricultural innovation
• Hear from practitioners sharing real-world experiences of innovation systems that put farmers, communities, and ecosystems at the center
• Explore policy options for strengthening public policy for just and responsible innovation.

Speakers

• Lim Li Ching (IPES-Food co-chair & senior researcher at Third World Network (TWN))
• Pat Mooney (IPES-Food panelist & co-founder and former director of ETC Group)
• Song YiChing (IPES-Food panelist & senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
• Nettie Wiebe (IPES-Food panelist & organic farmer)
• Israel Navarette (Associate scientist at the International Potato Center)

With closing remarks by Jane Maland Cady, Director of the Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems at the McKnight Foundation.

The webinar launches IPES-Food’s report ‘HEAD IN THE CLOUD: Challenging the false promise of digital agriculture and cultivating innovation from the ground up’

REGISTER NOW

The event will be held in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese with simultaneous interpretation.

IPES-Food is grateful for the support of the McKnight Foundation Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems.