AI and Agriculture: Putting Community Principles into Practice

Digital Agriculture is quickly proliferating in every corner of the globe. As a society, we recognize that all algorithmically-mediated systems have bias, and that IoT systems are insecure. Before agricultural technology platforms (ATPs) become entrenched, therefore, it is necessary that policy-makers, academics, advocates, and farmers ask very two basic questions: what would that bias look like in agriculture? And how are these technologies putting communities at risk?

While these questions seem simple, they are interrogating complex issues: do these programs ameliorate or exacerbate existing power and structural inequities? Are ATPs reinforcing trends towards intensive large-scale monoculture production and forcing trade-offs between short term productivity/efficiency gains and long-term environmental/socioeconomic sustainability? These are complicated, yet critical questions.

History has proven that once technology is implemented, it is difficult to change its course.

I am working on a project to ensure that these systems are designed and implemented justly, responsibly, sustainably, and with the input of the communities where they are being implemented. My project aligns with one principle: no ATP system should be implemented or utilized in the agricultural sector which undermines or fails to support both a socially and environmentally sustainable food system.

If action is not taken, not only will already-existing power imbalances and inequities likely be reinforced, but ideological preferences about economic, political, and environmental systems become embedded in increasingly opaque algorithmic systems.

I am conducting research and outreach to relevant stakeholders in the agricultural and digital rights community, prioritizing the geographic regions and populations where voices are often marginalized. These meetings and discussions will center around the following question: How can we forefront values of community and environmental sustainability in the design and implementation of ATP systems? (Perhaps for some communities, the question will be: should we implement these systems at all?)

Many of these technologies are still in nascent stages of development, so there is an opportunity to positively influence the sector.

We must make any risks transparent to techies, policy-makers, and to farming communities so that they can encourage the adoption of responsible and accountable data and algorithmic systems. Communities may hold different ideas about what ideal-type systems look like — but the goal of the project is to produce actionable documents which can be utilized as advocacy tools in different contexts.

I’m reaching out to interested stakeholders in the next few months. If you’re involved in digital or agricultural rights and have an interest in this topic, please get in touch!

Rian Wanstreet is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington in the Communication department, and a Mozilla Open Science Fellow. She studies Science, Technology, and Society, and the impact of new technologies on the Agricultural sector. Prior to her matriculation, she worked at the digital rights organization Access Now, where she launched the Grants Program and ran RightsCon, a summit which looks at the intersection of human rights and the technology sector.