Agriculture By Algorithm: Big Data, Digitalization, and Biotechnology Under Climate Change

Based on a textual analysis of publicly available documents from FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization), Bayer, and Bayer’s partner start-ups, this paper provides insight into the data-driven processes and technologies that are transforming agriculture into digitally standardized precision farming under climate change. Digitalization and biotechnology are intertwined within an “agriculture by algorithm” directed toward eliminating site-specific variations on the farm and optimizing efficiency for increasing yield. The paper focuses on commensuration processes which conceptualize agriculture as a measurable, quantified activity tied to algorithmic modelling. It has two goals: 1- to uncover the making of a normative context for change in farming by exploring FAO’s promotion of data-intensive technologies; and 2- to clarify, through the example of Bayer and its partner start-ups, the experimental redesign of biological relations and processes, and the entry of these innovations into farming. My analysis explicates how FAO public-policy advocacy and Bayer’s biotechnology innovations expand computational processes that support commensuration in agriculture and converts agroecologically and experientially diverse ways of knowing into standard data units within Big Data. Supported by multistakeholder platforms, blended co-financing, and venture capital, “agriculture by algorithm” is expanding the epistemic dominance of quantification into village farming, rendering local farming knowledges and assessments invisible and/or irrelevant.