Research project
Data Governance for Equitable and Sustainable Digital Food Systems (DIGIFOOD)
DIGIFOOD is a transnational research project that investigates how data governance can support equitable and sustainable digital food systems. Around the world, digital technologies are transforming agriculture. Sensors in soil, satellites in space, and mobile phones in farmers’ hands are generating vast flows of data. Combined with artificial intelligence, these technologies promise to help address urgent challenges like food insecurity and climate change.
- Duration
- 2025 - 2030
- Contact
- Matthew Canfield
Yet digitalization also brings new risks. The unequal ability to collect, access, and profit from agricultural data threatens to deepen existing power imbalances in food systems, raising critical questions about equity, accountability, and human rights. Most existing governance models for agricultural data were developed in the Global North and may not reflect the realities of small-scale farmers, peasants, and Indigenous communities in the Global South.
DIGIFOOD responds to these challenges by examining how agricultural data is governed across three countries at the forefront of digital agriculture in the Global South: Kenya, India, and Colombia. Through an innovative combination of legal anthropology, science and technology studies, and participatory research, the project explores how data governance frameworks are being shaped—and contested—in practice.
By analyzing the legal, technical, and cultural dimensions of data governance, DIGIFOOD sheds light on the broader political and social impacts of digitalization in agriculture. Ultimately, the project seeks to inform more just, inclusive, and sustainable approaches to digital transformation in food systems worldwide.