The Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) invites you to an academic seminar titled: “A Digital Revolution in Agriculture? New technologies and the future of the corporate food regime”, which will be presented by Dr. Louisa Prause of the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Proponents of the introduction of digital tools in the agri-food sector have suggested that digital tools can make agriculture more productive, profitable, and ecologically sustainable. Digitalisation is supposed to be the solution for feeding a growing population while minimising the negative impacts on biodiversity, soil health, and the climate.
Based on fieldwork in Germany and South Africa, Dr Louisa Prause brings together the food regime approach and critical technology studies to argue that rather than a revolution in agriculture, digitalisation deepens certain features of the existing food regime such as the retail sector’s control over global commodity chains, a high degree of oligopolistic corporate power and labour displacement.
Prause will offer thoughts on how digital tools might be designed and used differently in order to foster a socio-ecological transformation of the corporate food regime.
Seminar details:
Date: 22 November 2022
Platform: Virtual
Time: 13:00 – 14:00 (Central African Time)
11:00 – 12:00 Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) (Ghana)
14:00 East African Time (EAT) (Tanzania)
Click here to register:
About the speaker
Dr. Louisa Prause
Dr. Louisa Prause is part of the research group BioMaterialities at the Thaer-Institut at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. Her current work focuses on digital technologies and the socio-ecological transformation of the agri-food system.
She has previously worked on just transitions in the transport sector, conflicts around land and resource extraction, and social movements in Senegal, South Africa, and Germany.