Farming in the Dark: The Black Box of AI and the Erosion of Food Sovereignty

In the race to digitize every aspect of life, artificial intelligence is rapidly gaining ground in agriculture, quietly reshaping how we grow food, manage ecosystems and make decisions about land and livelihoods. Framed as a tool for efficiency and sustainability, AI is increasingly embedded in systems that claim to address climate change and food insecurity, but beneath the promises lie deeper questions: Who controls these technologies? Whose knowledge do they prioritize? And what happens when decisions about nature are outsourced to opaque, corporate-built algorithms?

In this essay, Soledad Vogliano, an anthropologist, farmer, and Program Manager at the ETC Group, unpacks the expanding role of AI in food systems. Drawing on her work supporting Indigenous and peasant movements and her leadership on digitalization at ETC, Soledad makes the case that AI in agriculture is not just a technical issue, it’s a political one.

Adapted from the Bioneers 2025 panel AI and the Ecocidal Hubris of Silicon Valley, this piece is the fourth installment in our four-part series examining some of the hidden impacts of artificial intelligence. Read to the end to access the other essays in the series.