Paicines Ranch, California

In March of 2024, the North American Digital Agriculture Working Group (NADAWG) hosted a Discovery Workshop on emerging ag tech at Paicines Ranch, California, with support from the 11th Hour Project, CS Fund, and #NoRegrets Initiative, and organized by ETC Group. The workshop convened 47 representatives from across sectors and movements - including civil society organizations, workers, growers, scholars, activists, funders, and grassroots innovators - to initiate a coordinated analysis and response to digitalization in agriculture that upholds the dignity and resilience of community food systems. 

The workshop examined the balance between movements resisting technologies that concentrate power and organizations that are creating technologies with community, recognizing that both resistance to the status quo and grassroots innovation are essential and interdependent in achieving food sovereignty. Technological assessment and governance were identified as the bridge, funneling insights from resistance initiatives to guide community-led innovation.

Discussions on technological autonomy explored tools and approaches that serve food sovereignty created by and for farmers and food system workers in the following areas:

• Technology commons and models for collective benefit

• Market access for local food

• Technology assessment and appropriate technologies (e.g., California Alliance with Family Farm’s Appropriate Technology Guide, and projects like AfriTAP and Tekla).

• Secure digital platforms and data sovereignty (e.g., Entidad's Farmworker Wallet, and OpenTEAM's Data Oath Agreement)

• Improving worker safety and uplifting work-led innovation (e.g., Semillero de Ideas' harvest basket innovation)

Key principles for technological autonomy include respecting rights and privacy, being community-owned and open-source, and promoting justice and food sovereignty for the collective benefit while reducing corporate concentration.

The workshop highlighted how industry-led ag tech threatens to deepen corporate control, displace workers, lead to deskilling, and increase costs for farmers. Resistance strategies include leveraging coordinated timing, crafting powerful counter-narratives that expose exploitation and environmental harm, and strategic coordination across civil society movements and tech sovereignty organizations.

On the final day, participants formed six affinity groups for potential collaboration: Resistance and Resilience, Tech Assessment, Data Commons and Data Trusts, Commons-Oriented IP, Farmworker and Grassroots Innovations. Over the course of 2024 these themes have routinely come up in the different convenings like D:food/web and Pie Ranch, highlighting the importance of bridging movements.