AUTONOMY

IN THE
FACE OF
AGTECH
TOOLS FOR CHALLENGING INDUSTRY NARRATIVES

A GROWING CULTURE & ETC GROUP

IN COLLABORATION WITH LA VÍA CAMPESINA AND
1  SECTION THE ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN AFRICA
This booklet was put together as a collaboration between
A Growing Culture, ETC Group, La Vía Campesina, and the Alliance
for Food Sovereignty in Africa in July/August 2023. We are grateful for
the support of The 11th Hour Project to create this work. Many of the
ideas conveyed here grew out of a series of online workshops that took
place in the spring of 2023 between A Growing Culture; ETC Group;
La Vía Campesina; and the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa.

2  
4 Overview
8 How to Use These Tools

01
NARRATIVE POWER
11 What is Narrative?
16 Assumptions
21 Emotions
25 Storytelling Principles
27 Storytelling Challenges
29 Storytelling Opportunities

02
CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE
34 Analysing Industry Narratives
40 Identifying Counter-Narratives
45 Uplifting an Alternative Narrative
48 Framing/Reframing

03
RESOURCES
53 Key Areas of Agtech
56 Agtech, For Different Sectors
58 Media Analysis 101

3  CONTENTS
Today, there is growing recognition of the significance of food systems.
Recent studies show that agriculture, and related land use changes, are
one of the largest contributors to climate change. In response, corpo-
rations and philanthrocapitalists are now investing billions of dollars in
initiatives they claim will put us on the path toward a more sustainable
future. But those initiatives do not focus on genuine moves away from
fossil-fuel-dependent agriculture or improvements in governance (how
power and decision-making are distributed). Instead they prioritise the
development and implementation of new and potentially highly profitable
industrial agricultural technologies. However, these technologies and the
corporate governance that comes with them pose very significant risks
for food sovereignty, agroecology, and farmers’ autonomy.

Farmers worldwide have created tools and systems (e.g. plows, intercrop-
ping methods, biofertilisers) to address their challenges and needs, for
as long as agriculture has existed. In fact, agricultural communities have
always been involved in technological processes, as they’ve found new
ways to relate to land and to each other. However, the concept of “agtech”
is relatively new.

Essentially, agtech is a newly developing industry that combines several

sectors — agribusiness, biotechnology, digital/software technology, and
financial technology. We typically see agtech advertised in the form of
“high-tech” modern farming implements, practices, and platforms — from
drone farming to robot harvesters, to agri-e-commerce sites, to gene-ed-
ited crops. But more importantly, agtech is propelled forward on the
back of a powerful vision of the future — one in which corporations have
even more control over our food systems.

This vision is designed to be attractive to governments and institutions –

in part, because it helps them to sidestep difficult policy decisions about
fossil fuel use. It is a narrative that is being used to facilitate the flow of
billions of dollars of investment into corporate-owned technologies that
further entrench and extend the control of powerful actors in industrial
agriculture.

4  INTRODUCTION
Agtech supporters also claim that their technologies are the key to feed-
ing the world in the face of a rising world population, increasing input and
energy costs, soil and water degradation, and climate change, all while en-
suring economic growth. But the trajectory of industrial agriculture over
the past few decades shows that these are false promises. Thirty years
ago, the term “genetically modified organism” (GMO) was coined to make
the engineering of genetic material sound as palatable to the public as
possible. In 1994, the first GMOs were introduced with the promise that
they would end world hunger, lower the price of many foods, and reduce
the use of pesticides. The reality has proved to be quite different: the in-
dustry has managed to produce only a small variety of GM plants, which
are deeply tied to industrial monocultures.1 Along the way, this “trail-blaz-
ing” technology has left a trail of destruction — dying soils, the use of in-
creasingly toxic pesticides and herbicides (e.g. dicamba), unprecedented
loss of biodiversity, spiraling debt cycles, and a rise in farmer suicides.

The novelty and attractiveness of the industry’s current offers hides a

simple truth: it is nothing more than a rebranding of the same exploitative
economic and political systems that now threaten our collective survival.
Nevertheless, that rebranding has been incredibly effective at capturing
the imagination of governments, investors, and people around the world,
willing to believe that it represents “the future of agriculture”.

Today, new technologies are being conceived, designed, and implement-

ed rapidly, without space to consider the implications and consequences
for farmers. As a result, the agricultural landscape is changing rapidly, and
farmers face growing threats to their rights and lives. It’s therefore be-
coming increasingly vital to examine and critique this technological push.
As it is, farming communities are often forced to decide whether or not to
adopt tools that were created far from their fields and without their input.

Most often, the expensive technologies we see taking center stage in

1 Friends of the Earth Europe. (2022). “Fast-track to failure Will new GMOs reduce pesticide use?... NO!”.

5  INTRODUCTION
formal food system dialogues serve the interests of the corporations who
created them and disenfranchise the farmers they claim to support. Our
work as civil society can focus on finding ways to counter and challenge
these corporate narratives — to reclaim and reassert our voices, per-
spectives, and values through our own stories.

6  INTRODUCTION
A NOTE ON THE USE OF “FARMERS”

There is great diversity among those who live and work in close rela-
tionship with land — from small-scale farmers to pastoralists, to hunter/
gatherers, to fisherfolk. Food sovereignty movement members around
the world embrace and use a wide variety of language to refer to the
communities that produce our food. The term “peasant” has been
deliberately reclaimed by La Vía Campesina as part of their political fight
to recognise peasants as subjects of rights, through the framework of
the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working
in Rural Areas (UNDROP).The authors of this toolkit, alongside most of
our movement partners, prefer terms that uphold and uplift difference
— selectively using “small-scale farmers”, “peasants”, and “Indigenous
communities” where applicable.

However, narratives that try to capture our world’s beautiful complexities

aren’t easily transmissible. Simplicity is paramount to create compelling
messaging that can challenge the status quo. As such, we have used the
term “farmer” throughout this toolkit. It is, of course, a broad term that has
very different meanings in different contexts. We have sacrificed some of
that nuance — not because we don’t believe it’s important, but because
we want to ensure our messages reach our audiences.

7  INTRODUCTION
HOW TO USE THESE TOOLS

A Growing Culture and ETC Group created this set of tools to synthesise
the insights of social movements and civil society communicators and
offer ways to respond quickly and effectively to corporate agtech nar-
ratives. Because there are so many new technologies put forward every
year and given that each can take time and in-depth knowledge to under-
stand, we propose an intervention method that focuses less on the tech-
nical details of each of these products and more on the influential stories
and narratives being used to sell them. We present strategies for identi-
fying how popular narratives around technologies work, their impact and
implications, what gives them power, and how we can take it back.

These tools are the product of a series of narrative workshops held be-
tween April and July 2023, featuring members of La Vía Campesina and
the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa. We have done our best to con-
dense the incredible analysis of workshop participants and put forward
opportunities to leverage that analysis for our communication goals.

This project wouldn’t have been possible without the guidance of the
Center for Story-based Strategy and the support of the 11th Hour
Foundation. We are also grateful for the Polden-Puckham Charitable
Foundation and CS Fund resources that contributed to this project.

8  INTRODUCTION
 01
NARRATIVE
POWER

9   NARRATIVE POWER

10   NARRATIVE POWER
 WHAT IS
NARRATIVE?

11   NARRATIVE POWER

Agtech sells its vision of the future through stories. While evidence would
suggest that agtech solutions are disenfranchising agricultural commu-
nities around the world, millions are being led to believe that these tech-
nologies will be our collective saviour. To contest that belief, we need to
create and share more compelling stories that can convince people that
another world is possible and worth fighting for. First, we need to estab-
lish what we mean by stories and narratives.

STORIES

We are constantly surrounded by information. We are always relating to

our environment — to other living beings and living systems — and trying
to make sense of the world. We tell stories to process all the information
we take in daily. These stories tend to be about characters and situations.
They are information systems, weaving together the who, what, where,
when, how, and why of things happening around us into a form that can
be easily transmitted to others.

For example, the following headline is a story about Jeff Bezos commit-
ting billions of dollars to confront the issue of climate change. It involves a
specific time, place, and a set of characters and circumstances.

12   NARRATIVE POWER

NARRATIVES/FRAMES

With the rise of different media forms, especially digital media, we are fed
more stories than we’ll ever be able to digest. The key is finding shared
stories that connect us, give us a collective sense of meaning and pur-
pose, align our understandings, and work towards a shared vision. This is
where narrative comes in. The narrative is not just about things happen-
ing to characters in a given time and place — it defines the frame through
which we view stories.

An easy way to think about framing is through photography. When taking

a photo, we look through a viewfinder and determine what we want in the
image. We choose who/what gets included and who/what gets left out.
We choose who/what is in focus and who/what is out of focus. We also
choose the moment to take the photo — at that moment, subjects could
have different gestures, expressions, or interactions, leading to vastly dif-
ferent interpretations by the viewer. In other words, the frame is the con-
text that puts other stories into perspective. It creates a viewpoint that
determines which stories to pay attention to, what to believe and what to
disregard, what to challenge and what to uplift.

Jeff Bezos’ climate pledge is a story rooted in a specific context (who/

what/when/where/why). However, we can imagine some narrative frames
that can put a story like this into perspective and offer a viewpoint that
determines how we feel about the story.

13   NARRATIVE POWER

Some potential narratives include:

Narrative 01:
Billionaires like Jeff Bezos have the resources and knowledge
needed to solve the climate crisis.

Narrative 02:
Billionaires like Jeff Bezos are the main cause of the climate crisis.

Whether you are more convinced by Narrative 01 or Narrative 02 has pro-

found implications for how you might receive the story about Bezos. If you
believe Narrative 01, you’re more likely to feel hopeful at the headline around
his US$10 billion commitment. If you believe Narrative 02, you’re more
likely to feel frustrated and would be more swayed by a headline like this:

Whoever controls the frame holds an immense amount of power. The

frames that prop up systems of oppression (e.g. colonialism, capitalism,
imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy) have withstood for centu-
ries, if not longer, because they have been reinforced and upheld by those
with a vested interest in maintaining unjust power structures.

14   NARRATIVE POWER

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

To change how people look at the world and to catalyse action, we have
to change the narrative. We have to offer people a new frame, viewpoint,
and way of looking at things. Our new frame must hold meaning for people
— allowing them to make more sense of the world than they can through
the dominant frame. Our success in narrative change hinges on our abili-
ty to clearly understand the dominant (corporate/institutional) frame and
the logic that makes it compelling. Once we have that clarity, the goal be-
comes to reframe and create new narratives — figuring out how to flip
the logic of the dominant narrative on its head. The challenge is doing
that without falling into the trap of reinforcing the values and beliefs of the
dominant narrative. Let’s take an example:

Frame:
A billionaire is the result of hard work.

Reframe:
A billionaire is the result of the exploitation of hard-workers.

15   NARRATIVE POWER

 ASSUMPTIONS

16   NARRATIVE POWER

Narrative frames are powerful because they determine the viewpoint
through which we look at stories, which is how we make meaning of the
world. But the frame only works if it connects to ideas that already exist
within our minds. Say an oil company is trying to get people excited about
a new offshore well. They are unlikely to convince someone that this is a
good thing if that person believes that the climate crisis is real and is pri-
marily caused by the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. However, they
might convince someone skeptical about climate change that the pro-
ject’s economic benefits outweigh the environmental costs.

When we talk about the things you need to believe to accept a story, we
are talking about assumptions. Every story is rooted in assumptions or
things you accept to be true without question. Sometimes assumptions
are tied to evidence — to information we’ve seen or heard about whether
or not something is real or possible. Other times, they’re not.

Some popular, problematic assumptions include:

1. Policies that are good for big corporations and wealthy individuals are
good for everyone. (A popular example is “trickle-down economics”.)
2. Government regulations on big businesses hurt everyone.
3. Poor countries are struggling because they are not “developed”. They
don’t have the knowledge and expertise to industrialise and create the
infrastructure needed to grow.
4. People are poor because they are lazy and don’t want to work.

17   NARRATIVE POWER

Assumptions can be about information, but they can also be about values
and beliefs. In other words, they are not just about what’s realistic or pos-
sible but also what is desirable — what is in line with our understanding of
the world we want to live in.

Many assumptions are common to agtech narratives, but one particularly

prevalent and powerful assumption stands out:

If we produced enough food, there would be no hunger.

Without this assumption, none of the industry narratives around agtech

hold weight. The only reason corporations, governments, and institu-
tions can continue to claim that technological innovation is the solution
to hunger is that they see hunger not as a structural problem but as a
technical problem — a simple problem of yield. This assumption has been
at the heart of the Green Revolution since its inception. It’s rooted in the
myth that population growth is outpacing yield and that people will starve
without a way to increase food production dramatically.

Today, industry narratives leverage the climate crisis to further under-

line this problem. The fact that extreme climatic events can compromise
entire harvests is used to emphasise the urgency of finding new ways to
ramp up food production. There’s an implicit suggestion in industry narra-
tives that, even if hunger did have a political dimension, the urgent threat
of climate change makes it unrealistic to pursue a political solution. This
is ultimately rooted in an additional assumption: private corporations are
more efficient at creating social change than governments.

18   NARRATIVE POWER

EVIDENCE

The assumption that hunger is caused by low food production is false. We

already produce enough food to feed every human being on the planet.1
More food is produced per capita today than at any other time in history
— enough to provide for over 10 billion people, the highest predicted pop-
ulation estimate for 2050.2

In theory, it should be an era of incredible abundance. But instead, we

have an escalating number of hungry people: at least 783 million 3 are
either hungry or malnourished, and due to the variable and even flawed
ways institutions measure hunger, that number could even be as high as
2.5 billion.4

EXAMPLE

To challenge the relationship between food production and hunger, con-

sider the case of two different famines in India in the late-1800s:

Jason Hickel writes that when the British colonised India, they imposed a
new agricultural system, pushing farmers to cultivate crops for the export
market, instead of for subsistence. In order to make Indian farmers more
“productive”, the British colonists encouraged villages to sell their grain
reserves, and enclosed common lands and water sources. These re-
serves and common resources had previously served as a safety net
when droughts came, allowing agricultural communities to survive.

1 Eric Holt-Gimenez et al. (2012). “We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People … and Still Can't End Hunger”.
Journal of Sustainable Agriculture.
2 Eric Holt-Gimenez et al. (2012). “We Already Grow Enough Food for 10 Billion People … and Still Can't End Hunger”.
Journal of Sustainable Agriculture.
3 UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. (2023). “122 million more people pushed into hunger since 2019 due to multiple crises,
reveals UN report”.
4 Hickel, Jason. (2019). The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets. W. W. Norton & Company.

19   NARRATIVE POWER

But because of the privatisation and export orientation forced by the
British, when El Niño arrived in 1876 and brought a three-year drought, ten
million Indians died of starvation.5 When El Niño came again in 1896, nine-
teen million Indians died of starvation. The total death toll across these
two drought-induced famines was 29 million.6

It would be easy to assume that 29 million Indians died because of a lack

of food in the country. But as Hickel says:

“Even during the height of the drought the country had a net
surplus of food — there was more than enough to feed the
entire population, it just needed to be moved to the right
areas. But instead the rail system, obedient to market logic,
was used by merchants to ship grain from the hinterlands into
central depots where it could be guarded from the hungry
and shipped to Europe.” 7

“In 1877 and 1878, during the worst years of the first drought,
they shipped a record 6.4 million tons of Indian wheat to
Europe rather than relieve starvation in India.” 8

5 Hickel, Jason. The Divide.

6 Hickel, Jason. The Divide.
7 Hickel, Jason. The Divide.
8 Hickel, Jason. The Divide.

20   NARRATIVE POWER

 EMOTIONS

21   NARRATIVE POWER

Agtech industry stories tend to be incredibly effective at leveraging two
basic, powerful emotions — fear and hope.

More than anything, people tend to be afraid of insecurity. We fear not

being able to feed ourselves and our children. Given the massive eco-
nomic inequality that has been created today, and the immediate threat
of the climate crisis, the fear of hunger and famine has been justifiably
heightened. What corporations, governments, and institutions have done
so well is convince people that without industrial agriculture, there will be
widespread hunger. Today, it’s gradually becoming more common to see
proponents of industrial farming point out some of its flaws (like the soil
erosion caused by intensive chemical use), but they never express an inch
of doubt that it’s still required to feed the world.

Dominant narratives suggest that at worst industrial agriculture is a “nec-

essary evil”. At best, it’s a benevolent saviour. Because these narratives
have so effectively convinced people that industrial agriculture is needed
to keep hunger at bay, it makes it very difficult to persuade people to call
for the dismantling or the radical transformation of the industrial food
system. Fear of survival can, quite naturally, easily trump all other value
considerations. If people think that systemic change will threaten their
ability to feed themselves or their families, they are likely to oppose it, or
at least far less likely to fight for it. In this way, agribusiness cleverly posi-
tions itself as our main source of hope. If we fear a world without indus-
trial agriculture, then it’s much easier to have hope in the technofixes that
corporations continue to put forward.

22   NARRATIVE POWER

EXAMPLE

In 2022, Sri Lanka experienced the largest economic and food crisis
since its independence. The narratives that emerged to explain the crisis
centred blame on the Sri Lankan government’s 2021 ban on the import
of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, and the overnight transition to pro-
ducing 100% organic. The failure of Sri Lanka’s organic farming policy is
increasingly being used as a case study to show the success of the in-
dustrial food system, and the inevitable food crisis that will unfold upon
transitioning to organic farming.

23   NARRATIVE POWER

Of course, there’s an entirely different way to frame the story. We could
instead center the ways in which British colonial rule restructured Sri
Lanka’s food system to feed the needs of the European market, sys-
tematically destroying much of Sri Lanka’s native biodiversity and local
food resilience. We could discuss how this restructuring made Sri Lanka
dependent on importing essential food items post-independence, and
forced the country to rely heavily on borrowing to counteract its grow-
ing trade imbalance and build public infrastructure. We could underline
the ways in which Sri Lanka’s loans were contingent on the IMF’s struc-
tural adjustment policies, pushing Sri Lanka to cut down on government
spending, slash subsidies, abolish price controls, devalue the rupee, and
liberalise the exchange rate. We could also talk about how the imposition
of the Green Revolution in the 1960s and 70s further devastated soils,
forced farmers into debt, increased export dependence on a handful of
cash crops, and destabilised food prices.

But the dominant narrative frame has largely left out this more complex
political history and instead centred a single policy shift (the shift to or-
ganic). As a result, it’s been highly successful at raising skepticism and
fear around any country’s desire to make a similar change.

24   NARRATIVE POWER

 STORYTELLING
PRINCIPLES

25   NARRATIVE POWER

WRITE FOR THE TOURIST, NOT THE PURIST SHOW, DON’T TELL
Within movements, because we’re constantly People don’t tend to change their perspective just
discussing and organising around complex systemic by receiving new information. Most of us are able to
issues, it can be easy to take for granted that others see the world in a new way only after having a direct
know, and care, about the same issues. If we assume experience. Our stories can become a catalyst
that our audience cares we are unlikely to create the for change if we use them to transmit not just
most clear and sharp argument, and are likely to only information, but also experience. Stories are lived.
reach people who are already a part of the struggle. By using vivid imagery, descriptive language, and
We can think of this audience as “purists” — people sensory details, we can make stories become more
who have similar bases of knowledge, views, and real, and give audiences the opportunity to feel as
beliefs as us. If we only craft stories for the purist, though they are a part.
we won’t be able to reach the audiences who may
be more compelled or convinced by industrial STORIES AND NARRATIVES ARE ALIVE
agriculture’s narratives. Our best bet is to never Just like seeds, stories and narratives carry our
assume the audience either knows about the topic cultural memories. And just like seeds, in order for
or cares about it. Instead, we can focus on reaching our stories and narratives to be able to grow and
the “tourists” — people who share little knowledge, nourish us, we must allow them to adapt and evolve
views, and beliefs with us; who know little to nothing to new conditions and understandings. They are not
about the issue at hand. If we’re going to reach them, meant to lock us into a static, unchanging perception
we’ll need to find ways to make our stories simple, of reality; instead, they are an opportunity to respond
bold, and accessible enough to make the “tourist” to the complex, dynamic world around us. As such,
want to stop and pay attention. it’s important for us to always be open to our stories
and narratives changing.
PULL, NOT PUSH
Because we believe so passionately in our struggles,
it can be tempting to want our audience to be “on our
side” right away. But, depending on their background,
that audience may have a significant amount of
learning and unlearning to do in order to see things
from a different perspective. If we try to force them to
see things our way — if we tell them that their version
of reality is wrong — they may feel alienated. We
have the opportunity to instead create stories that
recognise, value, and meet our audience where they
are at, and create a pathway for them to open up to
new ways of understanding the world.

26   NARRATIVE POWER

 STORYTELLING
CHALLENGES

27   NARRATIVE POWER

Creating compelling stories to counter agtech CASTING MOVEMENTS AS CHARACTERS
industry narratives comes with real difficulties. Keep The types of stories that the media likes to pick up
an eye out for some of the following: and publicise are often focused around individual
characters. As audiences, we are drawn to individual
DISPROVING INDUSTRY CLAIMS stories, as they help us relate, sympathise, and evoke
The agtech industry claims, whether or not it’s true, emotion. As movements, our stories cannot be
that their products create food that is higher yielding, defined through a single individual — they must be
more nutritious, and better adapted for the climate. collective. The challenge is to be able to represent
The industry has teams of co-opted scientists movements as compelling and relatable characters
ready to produce the studies needed to defend that people can care about without reducing a whole
these claims. It’s easy for civil society to be drawn movement down to one individual or spokesperson.
into a position where they feel obliged to debunk
and discredit false claims, which is extremely time THE ALLURE OF TUNNEL VISION
consuming for movements with fewer resources. When we are flooded with information about so
many impending crises, narrowing our focus can
CO-OPTATION OF SUSTAINABILITY/ be comforting. Technofixes rely on this comfort.
REGENERATIVE LANGUAGE We have become more and more alienated from
The agtech industry has been highly effective governance decisions and used to facets of our
at co-opting narratives around alternatives lives being changed through new technologies. It
to industrial agriculture. Examples include is commonplace to respond to the mention of a
“regenerative agriculture” and “nature-based problem with the statement: “There’s an app for
solutions”. Sometimes the industry even uses the that.” Technological solutions are concrete, tangible,
term agroecology to describe high-tech low-input and immediate in a way that political and social
farming, integrated with practices like intercropping. change is not. We understand causality much more
Extreme examples of co-optation can blur the easily. Technofixes also narrow the frame of view
storytelling landscape and make it difficult to in a way that makes it easy to hide the causes of
determine whether or not the story being promoted problems and avoid casting or admitting blame, all of
is in alignment with food movements. which make these stories simpler to latch onto.

THE APPEAL OF NOVELTY

Agtech solutions have the appeal of always seeming
new. Ideas that are new are often assumed to be
better by default. This creates a feeling of optimism
and trust that scientists and experts have things in
hand, which can be a powerful emotion when people
feel so overwhelmed in the face of many different
social and ecological crises. Novelty also creates an
instant media hook — new products are considered
“newsworthy” in a way that traditional agricultural
techniques are not.

28   NARRATIVE POWER

 STORYTELLING
OPPORTUNITIES

29   NARRATIVE POWER

SHOWING THE BIG PICTURE
Movement narratives are often at their most
powerful when they zoom out to look at the big
picture, utilising a holistic view of social, economic,
political, and ecological systems. Looking at a
scenario in a very narrow way can make a technofix
appear reasonable, but once the frame is widened
to reveal the big picture many forms of agtech are
revealed to cause more problems than they solve,
if they really solve problems at all.

EMOTIONAL RANGE
As social movements struggling for true change,
we tend to embrace naming root problems and
oppressors. Conflict can be daunting, but it also
makes stories exciting and inspiring. In this way,
movement stories can draw from a wider range of
emotions than industry narratives, since the goal is
to mobilise communities and inspire action rather
than to sell a product.

CENTRING THE POLITICS OF TECHNOLOGY

The debate around agricultural technologies tends
to hinge on whether they are “good” or “bad”
for our communities. The agribusiness industry
loves to keep conversations within the bounds of
whether or not a product is more efficient, resilient,
nutritious, and productive, or which practices are
most effective (industrial, organic, agroecological).
In this way, they keep the conversation focused on
technical questions. While it is sometimes necessary
to get into the details of a technology’s strengths or
weaknesses, it is usually strategic to avoid the trap
of contesting industry claims and focus instead on
big picture questions of sovereignty, ownership
and control.

Centring the politics of technology can also make

civil society narratives more difficult for industry
and governments to co-opt. Narrative co-optation is
somewhat unavoidable, as it is a standard industry
strategy, but it’s far more difficult when we keep
the focus of our own narratives firmly on political
questions around ownership and control. It’s simply
not possible for corporations to credibly claim that
their technologies can ever be truly community-
owned and controlled. Movements have the upper
hand when they frame the debate in terms of
political arrangements and power relationships.

30   NARRATIVE POWER

 02
CHANGING
THE AGTECH
NARRATIVE
31   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE
32   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE
In the series of narrative workshops hosted between April and July 2023,
participants from different movements and organisations examined a
suite of different corporate agtech stories. Our common goal was identi-
fying the core industry narratives at the heart of these disparate stories.

The industry narratives we identified are:

1. Technology will save us.
2. Corporations drive innovation.
3. Farmers are entrepreneurs.

In order to begin shifting the industry frames, we propose two different

strategies. One is to use counter-narratives to directly oppose and chal-
lenge the dominant narratives. The other is to put forward an alternative
narrative.

The counter-narratives we identified are:

1. Agtech corporations = pushers.
2. Agribusiness entrepreneur = captured consumer.

An alternative narrative we want to uplift is:

1. Farming is self-determination.

In the following pages, we break down these different narratives.

33   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

 ANALYSING
INDUSTRY
NARRATIVES

34   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Industry Narrative 01:
“FARMERS ARE ENTREPRENEURS”

Corporations, governments, and institutions pushing an agtech agenda

suggest that the only way to think about agriculture is as a business. We
can think of this as the shift from agriculture to agribusiness. Agribusiness
is concerned with one question: How can we produce more food at a lower
cost? In short, they define the goal of farming as making as much money
as possible. Social, ecological, and political values are not important.

We frequently see the claim that farmers aren’t productive, profitable, or

successful because they fail to think of themselves as entrepreneurs and
make “smart” business decisions. This frame is particularly marketed to
younger generations of rural communities. It’s a strategy to indoctrinate, to
push young farmers to see themselves as “business people”, and to cast
aside the “backwards” subsistence-based systems in which they were
raised. This strategy effectively creates a culture where young farmers are
encouraged to look down on their parents and elders for their “outdated”
agricultural practices, and puts pressure on older generations to adopt the
“advanced” views of their children.

Corporations sell the idea that farmers who remain rooted in self-sufficient
practices are stuck in the past, holding back and impoverishing their com-
munities and themselves. “Entrepreneur” means becoming “empowered”.
It means making business decisions that will give a farmer the income
they need to be more free and to guarantee the freedom of their children.
“Entrepreneur” has become synonymous with “independent”. It’s not easy
to challenge the idea of “entrepreneurship”, because it can allow farmers
to feel more dignified, at a time when agriculture is so devalued, and chil-
dren are taught that they should leave their rural farming lives behind to
progress and advance.

35   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Industry Narrative 02:
“TECHNOLOGY WILL SAVE US”

This is the “technofix” narrative — the idea that technologies are the only
way to solve complex structural problems. The idea that we can “inno-
vate” our way out of any issue is compelling — first, because it’s rooted in
optimism and hope; second, because it encourages us to direct our focus
away from root problems (which would require changing the status quo)
and towards quick fixes. The technofix comforts the audience by reassur-
ing them that they won’t have to change their attitudes and behaviours, and
that “experts” can invent a way out of any crisis.

This frame obscures history. It might recognise that past technologies cre-
ated problems we now have to address, but it never considers whether
those problems indicate systemic failures. Instead, it frames problems cre-
ated by past technologies as “unavoidable” or at least not worth focusing
on. The corporations and institutions that push this narrative suggest that
the only real consideration is how we can create new technologies to im-
prove on past technologies (as opposed to questioning whether past tech-
nologies were needed in the first place).

Most of the agtech industry’s “new” agricultural technologies are rooted in

the idea of “precision” or “climate-smart” agriculture. The idea here is that
climate change is making farming more unpredictable. These digitally-driv-
en technologies are therefore being sold as ways to mitigate risks caused
by our changing environment while increasing yield.

A powerful way that agtech sells its products and initiatives is by using the
label “smart”. We see it everywhere — “smartphones”, “smart sensors”,
“smart farming”, “climate-smart agriculture”. All “smart” really means is
“digitally connected”. But by attaching this label to any agtech product, it
makes any non-digitally-connected tool, practice, or platform seem the op-
posite – “dumb”. By equating digitalisation with intelligence, this frame sug-
gests that incorporating digital systems into society is the natural course
of evolution instead of a corporate ploy to increase profits. As a result, it
makes communities feel ignorant for not adopting new technologies.

36   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

The narrative that agtech will save agriculture also relies on the assump-
tion that farm work is drudgery — hard, dull, and humiliating. The indus-
try capitalises on this perception by offering new agricultural technolo-
gies to escape back-breaking labour. Most corporate technologies are
pitched as opportunities to “free labour from the farm”. The central idea
is to make farming easier by replacing human labour with mechanical and
digitally-driven tools. Regardless of how they are marketed, most corpo-
rate technologies end up having the effect of replacing farmers and farm-
workers, who are deemed “inefficient” and “costly”.

Some technologies may not physically replace farmers. Still, they replace
farmers’ existing systems of gathering and processing information, ob-
serving ecosystems, and creating new knowledge. Examples include data
sensors that gather information about the soil and drones that scan and
map fields. The idea behind these data-accumulation technologies and
the associated digital advisory is to enable farmers to make “smarter” de-
cisions to increase productivity and farm efficiency. But in changing how
farmers acquire information about their local ecosystems, agtech has the
potential to compromise farmers’ autonomy, erode traditional knowledge
systems, and de-skill.

37   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Industry Narrative 03:
“CORPORATIONS DRIVE INNOVATION”

The agribusiness industry has been incredibly effective at convincing

people that expensive new technologies are the key to solving hunger in
the face of climate change. As a result, it’s been easy for them to position
themselves as the “experts”. Suppose we believe that the technologies
that really matter are those that take teams of scientists, engineers, and
coders to make, and massive data servers to run. In that case, it’s easy to
believe that the entities that have access to all those resources and cap-
ital are the ones we should turn to for guidance.

The narrative being pushed is that if we want world-changing innovation,

we must trust in and enable the private sector to have free reign. This is
deeply ingrained in the ideology of neoliberalism. Within this frame, the
government’s role is not to oversee or regulate but to create the con-
ditions for corporations to exercise the greatest possible freedom. So
much of free market capitalism is justified through the idea that corpo-
rate freedom and competition allow for the most impactful research and
development.

Of course, corporations wouldn’t be able to research or develop anything

without hordes of scientists and engineers carrying out and legitimising
their work. As governments have ceded more and more power and con-
trol over to the private sector, scientific funding has shifted away from
public institutions and towards corporations. As a result, so much scien-
tific research within agriculture exists not to study and evaluate pressing
problems but to justify corporate technologies. This corporate co-opta-
tion of science is rarely called out or addressed.

For a long time, the agribusiness industry disregarded farmers, centring

itself as our collective saviour. Now that agribusiness corporations and
related institutions have gotten pushback from civil society for erasing
the role of farmers, they have repositioned themselves. Corporations
now suggest that farmers are actually “demanding” solutions from them,
and they (corporations) are simply responding to that call. In this way,

38   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

corporations strategically suggest that they are, contrary to common crit-
icism, listening to farmers.

Within this frame, farmers are placed in a very specific role in relation to in-
novation. Corporations design and build technologies that they then bring
to farmers to “test” and later to “adopt”. In this context, farmers are not
being recognised as active innovators themselves — they are test sub-
jects, being used so that the agribusiness industry can push their prod-
ucts to other farmers. But the industry narrative presents it differently — it
frames farmers as vital voices who determine whether technologies are
“up to the task” in real landscapes.

39   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

 IDENTIFYING
COUNTER-
NARRATIVES

40   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Counter-Narrative 01:
AGTECH CORPORATIONS = PUSHERS

Organisations that leverage farmer/entrepreneur narratives effectively,

like One Acre Fund or the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, rely
on a development model that offers farmers packages of seeds, chemi-
cals, and sometimes tools and financing. They claim that they are uplift-
ing farmers’ agency, but in reality, they are putting farmers in the position
of passive recipients.

Today, farmers are encouraged to adopt new technologies and practices

developed without their insight and input. “Adopt” translates to “buy”. The
only way that farmers can reap any supposed benefits of a technology is
if they purchase it first. Most corporate agricultural technologies are only
accessible to farmers if subsidised or financed. These subsidies gener-
ally take the form of a) direct institutional financial aid enabling farmers
to purchase technologies that would otherwise be unaffordable and/or
b) indirect support that incentivises industrial agriculture by making the
technology cheaper through tax exemptions, research and development
support, or other policies that favour corporate-controlled technologies.
However, both forms of support can just as easily be withdrawn, leaving
farmers in a desperate place.

Corporate-controlled technologies are usually pitched as quick fixes (e.g.

“high-yielding” seeds and agrochemicals) but can only work with the ad-
dition of more inputs over time. In the same way that a human body can
become dependent on a drug, the land becomes dependent on the syn-
thetic inputs supplied. Over time, the land becomes depleted, and a with-
drawal of inputs can lead to collapse. Corporations are intentionally get-
ting farmers “hooked” on a system that will later leave them worse off than
when they started. Given the economic squeeze farmers worldwide are
already facing, any solution requiring farmers to become more depend-
ent on corporations can’t possibly benefit them. If anything, it guarantees
that farmers find themselves deeper in debt.

41   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Additionally, the vast majority of the new agricultural technologies that
corporations are pushing still rely on fossil fuels — to mine the materials
needed to make technological components, to manufacture the tech-
nologies, and to operate them, as well as to make the chemicals that
will need to be applied alongside the new technologies. While the indus-
try claims that new digitally-driven tools are more precise and fueled by
more sustainable energy systems, almost all are still fossil-fuel-depend-
ent. Incredibly, corporations can un-ironically claim that they are “solving”
the climate crisis with technologies rooted in the same extraction and
emissions that have caused the crisis in the first place. In this context,
agtech corporations become the worst type of pushers — addicted to
the very products they are selling.

Agtech advertises its ability to create revolutionary farming technologies

as well as technologies to “connect farmers to the market”. The industry’s
pitch is that farmers today are doomed to fail without being hooked into
e-commerce platforms through which they can sell their products. But
the platforms the agtech industry is promoting are less about giving farm-
ers a better way to sell to consumers and more about giving agribusiness
corporations a better way to sell their products to farmers. Once farmers
are connected to new digital platforms, through which their data can be
easily tracked and harvested, it’s far easier for corporations to target them
with their products (seeds, chemicals, fertilisers, and more technologies).
In other words, connectivity represents a more precise means of pushing
their products.

42   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Counter-Narrative 02:
AGRIBUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR = CAPTIVE CONSUMER

The rise of digitally-driven technologies is challenging ideas around au-

tonomy, ownership, and control. Take the example of John Deere, one
of the largest corporations in the U.S., known for producing agricultural
machinery. In 2016, John Deere stirred up controversy when it put soft-
ware locks on its equipment, meaning only licensed dealers can make
repairs.1 In other words, the company effectively made it illegal for farm-
ers to repair their farm equipment themselves or take it to independent
repair shops. John Deere also made it so that they could remotely disable
and shut down equipment at any time. They did this by utilising two dig-
ital rights acts to assert that people who buy their equipment don’t own
either the physical tool or the software within it — they are only purchas-
ing a licence to use it.2

Corporations claim that advanced software technology gives farmers

more knowledge, insight, and capacity. But, even if that knowledge, in-
sight, and capacity are relevant to a farmer’s needs, what does it matter
if they don’t have autonomy over the technology? If a company can dic-
tate the exact terms of use for their technology, and disable/deactivate
it at will, then it never really belongs to the farmer. If a farmer doesn’t own
it, they can never truly have autonomy. And given what we know about
the immense potential for data harvesting created by new technologies,
we can argue that these technologies give corporations the capacity to
control farmers and their decisions in ways that are more extractive and
alienating than before.

In this way, we can think of reframing “entrepreneur” (as presented by

these organisations) as an “captive consumer”. “Entrepreneur”, as cor-
porations and institutions define it, actually means fitting into a system

1 Walsh, Kit. (2016). “John Deere Really Doesn’t Want You to Own That Tractor”. Electronic Frontier Foundation.
2 Thomas Jeffrey Horton and Dylan Kirchmeier. (2020). “John Deere's Attempted Monopolization of Equipment Repair, and the Digital
Agricultural Data Market - Who Will Stand Up for American Farmers?”. CPI Antitrust Chronicle.

43   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

where farmers don’t control the terms. They may have more short-term
economic freedom, but that can only be achieved through long-term de-
pendency on corporations. The agtech “entrepreneur” has far less auton-
omy. They are obliged to plant the seeds they’re told to plant; they use the
chemicals they’re told to spray; they work the soil in the way they’re told
to; they sell their crops in the way they’re advised. The “entrepreneur”, as
agribusiness presents it, is an identity that allows corporations to extract
even more from farmers by targeting them at all stages of agriculture (as
opposed to just the final marketing of their products).

44   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

 UPLIFTING
AN ALTERNATIVE
NARRATIVE

45   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

FARMING = SELF-DETERMINATION

The agtech industry frames markets (which they dictate) and technolo-
gies (which they own and create) as the only way for farmers to become
more secure and empowered. Their narratives operate under the as-
sumption that ownership – whoever controls something and makes de-
cisions about it – doesn’t matter.

As corporate consolidation across all industries increases, it becomes

more likely that people will hold this assumption, and forget that we, as
individuals and communities and even states, were more autonomous
in the past. It is easy to unthinkingly adjust to a “new normal”, where a
small number of corporations in each sector set the terms for our lives.
Confronting this systemic consolidation becomes daunting. However, we
can resist the erosion of our autonomy by restoring pride in the idea of
self-determination.

At its core, self-determination is the idea of being able to control one’s

own life and for communities to determine their own futures. While many
of us have become accustomed to a reality where we have little freedom,
the idea of freedom itself is still as powerful as ever. No one wants to be-
lieve they’re not free. And nothing is as elemental to our freedom as the
ability to control how we feed ourselves and our communities. Being fed
is one of our most basic human needs. When we feel confident that we
can meet that need, we are secure.

Businesses can close. Markets can crash. Money can become worth-
less. What will never change is the value of food. The richest person and
the poorest person in the world both need to eat. And what the richest
person in the world can never buy is the web of relationships required to
grow food within a local ecosystem in ways that will sustain generations
to come. Only with the security of feeding ourselves can we truly become
secure in other areas of our lives.

African revolutionary Thomas Sankara once said, “He who feeds you,
controls you.” If someone else dictates the terms by which your community

46   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

feeds and cares for its members, then they control your community’s sur-
vival, and they control you. The central strategy of the agtech industry is
hooking farmers into global markets and technological systems that farm-
ers don’t control. The more farmers have to rely on those systems to gather
knowledge and make decisions, the more autonomy they give up. Farming
carries an often unrecognised power. It can represent resistance in the
face of forces that aim to extract every last drop of profit that they can from
the world. In this way, farming can represent a commitment to life.

Feeding our communities takes a tremendous amount of unseen knowl-

edge and effort. Farmers have been culturally devalued for a long time,
led to believe that their work is less important than that of doctors, law-
yers, scientists, and engineers. Agtech corporations suggest that they are
committing teams of “experts” to agricultural research and development
because they want to uplift and support the value of farmers. Essentially,
they’re saying, “You just grow the food. We’ll take care of everything else.”

We can push back against this compartmentalisation by emphasising that

farmers are scientists. They are engineers. They are innovators. They are
entrepreneurs. They are historians. They are artists. They are guardians,
protectors, defenders, and caregivers. While corporations are encourag-
ing farmers to give up these identities in the interest of ease and progress,
we can assert that farmers are self-determined because they hold this
multitude of identities.

Leah Penniman has said, “To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves.”
When we control the ways in which our communities are fed, we control
our destiny. While the industry sells the idea that farmers farm because
they have no other choice, the narrative of self-determination encourages
farmers to declare: “I’m a farmer by choice.”

47   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

 FRAMING/
REFRAMING

48   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

Our intent is to identify and challenge the most fundamental narratives
that define agtech’s frame. However, there are unstated beliefs and values
that cut across all of the core narratives. Below we’ve outlined a few key
examples of these beliefs and values, with proposals for reframes.

AGTECH FRAME REFRAME

Technological progress is linear. Today is the Growth is dynamic. While we might have more
most advanced time in human history. Our information, or new ways of transmitting it, that
progress in farming looks like a continuous makes us no better than generations who have
path of technological innovation, from peasant, come before us, and those who will come after
subsistence agriculture to expensive, digitally- us. Like our ancestors, we make decisions in our
driven, precision agriculture. Societies that don’t lifetimes about how to structure systems, whether
use industrial technologies are backwards, social, political, economic, or ecological. And
unintelligent and living in the past. like our ancestors, we will make many mistakes.
Having humility in regards to how we discuss
history gives us the opportunity to not repeat past
failures, and to imagine alternative futures.

Technological progress benefits everyone. Historically, technological progress has been used
Because of the continuous process of to oppress. In an unequal world, technology only
technological advancement, humanity is better consolidates power. Without equity in governance
off today than ever before. More advanced and decision-making, and without the distribution of
technologies enable more human freedom. wealth and resources, powerful new technologies
are disproportionately used by the few to
disenfranchise the many. Benefiting everyone
requires reshaping political and economic systems.

Questioning technological progress is anti- Science is questioning. Inquiry is the foundation

science. Scientific knowledge is the highest, and of science. True science is achieved through
most objective, form of knowledge. Only those curiosity and criticism. Scientific inquiry has,
who have trained within academic institutions throughout time, been defined and challenged
and who have gained access to privileged spaces through experimentation and direct experience.
can have valid knowledge about natural systems The knowledge and questions posed by those
and processes. Other forms of knowledge are who have lived on, and worked most closely with,
biased and influenced by superstition or political land, are just as valid as those of “established
values and cannot be trusted as being rigorous or scientists”.
reliable. Attempts to question technologies that
have been backed by science are unfounded. Continued ↓

49   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

 AGTECH FRAME REFRAME
We must control nature. We exist separate from, We are nature. The separation between humans
and often in competition with, nature. There are and the non-human world is a colonial construct
limited resources on this planet, and the key to that enables extraction and exploitation. Land is
our survival is learning how to predict, control, a living being; our kin; a relative; a part of us. We
and even “improve” on nature. This includes are no less related to each other than we are to
manipulating the building blocks of life — genetic the trees. Because we do not have dominion over
information in the form of data. The best way to do nature, our work is to understand the abundant
that is by gathering knowledge about the natural ecosystemic relationships that already exist,
world through Western, scientific study and using and how we can be a good relative within living
this knowledge to harness nature’s power for our systems. Humans can only thrive if the whole
own ends. ecosystem thrives.

50   CHANGING THE AGTECH NARRATIVE

 03
RESOURCES

51  RESOURCES
52  RESOURCES
 KEY AREAS
OF AGTECH

53  RESOURCES
The following information about agricultural provide what the corporations have dubbed “artificial
technologies has been summarised from a series intelligence” (AI). Whoever owns these data sets can
of articles written by ETC Group and published by then sell them as a commodity to other corporations,
Heinrich Boell Hong Kong. such as land speculators, commodity traders, hedge
funds, and seed breeders.
The proponents of agtech are part of a broader
swathe of “tech-solutionists” driving forward Ultimately, it is not farmers who will gain a useful
a tsunami of new technologies. These include overview of their fields, but companies like Bayer
digitalisation (the collection and processing of and its partners – firms like Microsoft – who will gain
data on human behaviour, agriculture, fishing, and a detailed digital overview of entire land, water, and
ecosystems); biodigital convergence (the synthesis food flows. The insights from this ecological cache
of new living organisms and processes from gene will enable them to better target farmers to persuade
sequences); and geoengineering (the intentional, them – and likely lock them into contracts – to adopt
large-scale technological manipulation of Earth’s practices and products that suit the shareholders of
systems). mega-corporations.

01: DIGITALISATION Giant tech companies have also invested billions in

Agrichemical companies have gambled on a series food warehousing, retail, and logistics subsidiaries.
of mega-mergers with data companies. Their aim The rapid acceleration in online food shopping
is to accumulate “big data” – a massive volume during the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened
of information enabling corporate algorithms their control over food delivery, grocery retail, and
to observe patterns and make predictions and distribution.
decisions, in place of farmer autonomy. This
accumulation is happening in ever-increasing Overall, the digitalisation of food and agriculture
volumes through collection devices placed in self- comes with a range of serious potential impacts.
driving tractors, drones, sensors in the field, and In addition to massively increased surveillance,
even devices attached to plants and livestock. extraction, and exploitation of people, it can
contribute to deskilling, displacement, and alienation.
Advertisements portray entrepreneurial farmers, In addition, given the increased energy use needed
smartphones in hand, controlling their own data. for data collection and storage, and the extraction of
But in reality, every collection device gathers and raw materials needed to make digital technologies,
transmits data to corporate data centres, which use digitalisation takes a heavy toll on the environment.
their algorithms to process the statistics and

54  RESOURCES
02: BIODIGITAL CONVERGENCE One immediate threat from the commercial
The ongoing development of molecular manipulation scaling-up of genetic interventions is the use of
technologies includes the application of genetic “gene-silencing pesticides”, which are synthetic
engineering to agriculture, aquaculture, and forestry. nucleotides (such as artificial RNA) designed to alter
Living processes are increasingly being reimagined the genetics of organisms with which they come into
as data, which is then extracted and processed contact. Attempts to deploy genetically engineered
as a commodity. This has been described as data microbes into agricultural soils are another risky
colonialism, reminiscent of resource extraction in the venture.
era of European colonialism.
Another market that corporations are eyeing for
Take GMOs, for example. Most GMOs in agriculture future profits through molecular manipulation is
today are engineered into one of two types of plants “alternative proteins”, including dairy and meats (“alt-
– one that is resistant to herbicides, like glyphosate; meat”). In response to policy priorities to reduce
the other that produces chemicals that are toxic meat consumption, several of the world’s most
to insects. The most common GM crops today are powerful businesses are now proposing engineered
soybeans, corn, rapeseed, and cotton. Contrary protein products, including simulated eggs and
to industry claims, the use of GMOs has actually simulated dairy products that are cultivated in sterile
increased the application of toxic chemicals, and has vats of engineered microorganisms.
almost always made matters worse for people and
ecosystems wherever they have been deployed.
03: FINTECH
Due to the public backlash against GMOs, Financial technologies (also known as “fintech”)
the agribusiness industry has developed new refers to the application of digital technologies to
terminology, such as “gene editing”. This is simply a the finance sector. It encompasses digital payments,
marketing tool; all that has changed is a streamlining the computerised management of markets, and
of the engineering process, reducing the cost to novel digital currencies, such as cryptocurrencies,
remove or transfer genetic material within the same increasingly mediated through encrypted online
or closely related species. CRISPR/Cas9 is the best digital ledgers (blockchains). Terms associated with
known of these new genetic engineering techniques. fintech, such as “smart contracts”, conceal both
their high energy use (the environmental cost of
Among other uses, CRISPR/Cas9 has enabled the blockchains they require) and the fact that they
the development of an experimental technique its hand control over resources to unaccountable and
inventors have dubbed “gene drives”. Gene drives unscrutinised corporations.
allow scientists to place “exterminator genes”,
as they might better be known, into insects and Fintech can also include the financialisation and
some other sexually-reproducing organisms in trading of “ecosystem services” (the corporate term
the laboratory. These genetic elements are self- for the natural ways in which ecosystems make the
propagating and can be passed down through planet liveable), such as carbon, nitrogen, and water
generations. In theory, these gene drives allow cycles. The intention is to monetise each of these
genetic engineers to deliberately spread a particular natural services through digital financial platforms.
genetic code with the intention of wiping out a target
population, often to control pests and disease.
Furthermore gene drives may eliminate both target
and non-target species, and the impacts that gene
drives could have on ecosystems is uncertain. Just
like pesticides and GMOs before them, gene drive
organisms (sometimes called GDOs) could eliminate
beneficial pollinators, yet come with no guarantee
that they would be able to achieve the outcome for
which they have been designed.

55  RESOURCES
 AGTECH,
FOR DIFFERENT
SECTORS

56  RESOURCES
AGTECH FOR INVESTORS
The term agtech is used widely to drum up
investment for new start ups. In an investing context,
agtech is pitched as a useful concept because it
opens up a new area of investment. For investors,
the value of agtech is only about meeting the needs
of farmers or eaters in so far as they are a new
market, but more importantly about creating a shiny
new idea that can get “angel investors” to put their
money into a startup or a new idea. With sufficient
promotion and the perception that this technology
could create a new market, agtech could become
a bubble and an easy way to make quick money
through speculation.

AGTECH FOR TECH GIANTS

Tools like AI and Blockchain have been put to various
uses and entrepreneurs are constantly looking
for new ways to take the algorithms that have
been developed for facial recognition or financial
technology and apply them to new areas — with the
goal of creating a successful business. For huge
technology corporations, agriculture represents a
field where the skills, tools, and methods they have
already developed can be put to new, profitable
uses.

AGTECH FOR BIG AG/BIG FOOD

Since the Green Revolution, Big Ag and Big Food
have been working to capture more and more of the
value of agriculture. They work to find tools that will
require farmers to spend less on labour and more
on various technologies including “designer” seeds
and chemical fertilisers. Their efforts within agtech
are advertised as opportunities to “streamline
processes”, and “mitigate disruptions”, but the main
effect is to extend their control over the industrial
food chain. When pitching to politicians and
policymakers, Big Ag and Big Food tend to frame
their concerns in terms of “feeding the world” and
protecting the food chain from climate disruption.
This dovetails neatly with the interests of tech giants
and agtech investors. The endgame here is about
extracting more value for their shareholders by any
means necessary.

57  RESOURCES
 MEDIA
ANALYSIS 101

58  RESOURCES
Movements can often increase their impact by taking time to understand
how and when the media is reporting on the issues they care about. This
short guide suggests an approach that involves analysing a small sample
of online news media*. The results can equip movements with valuable
insights for creating counter-narratives, and provide a solid basis for more
in-depth narrative analysis.

This 5-step approach is not expensive or overly time-consuming. If you

pick the right media sources, 10-15 articles should give you an overview
of dominant narratives and counter-narratives. Most analyses and rec-
ommendations can be completed in approximately 5 days, depending on
the complexity of the issue and volume of media coverage.

*Note, this approach does not cover social media.

59  RESOURCES
STEP 01: SCOPE THE MEDIA
LANDSCAPE
Time estimate: 0.5 day

SEARCHING
Start by searching online news coverage to get an overview of how the
media is reporting on your issue (Google News is a free option). Your
search will probably focus on the top daily newspapers and broadcast
news outlets, but may include some more specialist media outlets, such
as scientific journals or issue-specific trade media.

KEY TERMS
Note that sometimes reporters may use a variety of different terms when
referring to an issue. To ensure your search captures representative cov-
erage, come up with a shortlist of commonly used terms.

QUESTIONS
1. How widely has the issue you are analysing been reported in recent
months?
2. Which main outlets are covering — or ignoring – the issue?
3. How deeply do articles examine the issue?
4. Are the articles covering the issue spread across the socio-political
spectrum, or is it only covered by a section of politically-aligned — or
specialist — media?

NOTES
Make a note of your answers. Also note down articles that cover the issue
in greater depth. You may find that some articles are repeated across dif-
ferent news outlets. Media companies often re-run articles published in
mainstream outlets, or buy articles from international news wire services
(such as Reuters, Agence France-Presse, and Pan-African News Wire).
The sources of these re-runs have a lot of influence over how narratives
play out across the media, so consider adding one to your selection for

60  RESOURCES
analysis in Step 2. Note down the name of the original source (which is
usually cited at the top of re-run articles), along with the name of the orig-
inal author, if it is given. You may recommend time is invested into finding
key reporters’ contact details and organising a briefing for them, as part
of your list of actions in Step 5.

STEP 02: PREPARE. PRIORITISE. PLAN.

Time estimate: 0.5 day

Before you start analysing articles, set clear aims and parameters to keep
your research manageable. The following questions can provide a solid
starting point.

QUESTIONS
1. What is the purpose of the analysis?
2. Which geographic regions or countries are most important to your
campaign?
3. Which timeframe is most important to your campaign (e.g. a specific
decision-making meeting or technological “advance”)?

SELECT ARTICLES
Draw on the notes you made during Step 1 to select 10-15 articles you
think are most relevant to your research. Your list will probably include
a selection of the more in-depth articles you identified and some of the
source articles, due to their reach and influence.

ORGANISE ARTICLES
List your selected articles, including the name of the outlet, date of article,
the name of the journalist, and their reporting role (environment, science,
technology, politics, etc).

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NOTES
Note that when stories are reported by political correspondents (as op-
posed to environment or science/technology reporters), it can suggest
that people’s interest in the issue is high and it is on decision-makers’
agendas. At these moments, movements have a peak opportunity to
engage media and influence public opinion.

STEP 03: ANALYSIS

Time estimate: 1.5 days

Once you have decided your parameters, structure your approach by se-
lecting categories of analysis.

Common categories are:

A. Narrative Framing and False Assumptions
B. Wording and Tone
C. Visual Language
D. Message
E. Messenger

Capture your results against each category and look out for any common
themes across your set of articles.

A. NARRATIVE FRAMING AND ASSUMPTIONS

This is probably the most important factor to consider when determining

dominant narratives. To analyse narrative (or story) framing, think about
how reporters connect a topic to the popular stories that already exist
within people’s minds. Frames reflect a specific viewpoint or mindset.
They carry with them strong associations that can be negative or positive,
and their use tends to activate those associations in the minds of readers.

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By identifying which frames have been used in each article, you can de-
termine some of the underlying messages that the stories are sending,
or assumptions they make. Once the frames are identified, it is easy to
gauge which narratives they uphold (and which they obscure), and wheth-
er their underlying assumptions are true or false.

Articles that follow dominant narratives often start with a false assump-
tion, often in the headline and/or opening paragraph. Common false as-
sumptions are that the urgency for a particular policy or technology out-
weighs the risks. For example, that we urgently need to genetically modify
crops to feed the world, or to modify mosquitoes to protect millions of
children dying from malaria. In Western media, these narratives are often
underpinned by assumptions of need on the part of developing countries,
as a basis for justifying the imposition of particular technologies or agri-
cultural models, for example.

Read your selected articles and think about how each one frames the
issue at hand.
1. Which narratives do you think are accurate, partly accurate, or untrue?
2. Which topics, angles or viewpoints are covered, and which are ig-
nored or featured less centrally in the story than others?
3. Which headlines are based on false assumptions promoted by those
pushing the dominant narrative?

Look for patterns and trends in the reporting and capture your findings
for each article.

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B. WORDING AND TONE

Look deeper into each article. Are there certain words, phrases, met-
aphors, or statistics that are commonly used? You can start by asking
these sorts of questions:

1. Why has this particular word, phrase, or metaphor been chosen?

2. Has it been chosen to trigger a particular emotion or underlying as-
sumption in the reader?
3. Does the language used carry implicit bias (usually stemming from a
false assumption)?
4. Does the language used justify or legitimise certain people/institu-
tions? Does it deligitimise others?

For example, media reports that sway towards the dominant narrative
around genetically modified organisms (GMOs) often refer to civil society
as “eco-warriors”. Through this label, stories end up reinforcing the idea
that resistance to GMOs is an extremist viewpoint held by a small subset
of the population, rather than a majority opinion.

C. VISUAL LANGUAGE

Look beyond words to the images used. Images can be just as powerful
in reinforcing bias, yet they tend to be overlooked in analyses. The graph-
ics or photographs chosen to illustrate an article often provide insight into
the viewpoint of the media outlet, or a particular reporter, and can serve
to reinforce the dominant narrative.

Examine the images carefully to see what underlying messages they

carry. Ask yourself the three questions outlined in Section B. Consider
whether they are drawing on a false assumption in the reader, such as
an urgent need for a particular technology, or conveying a “solution” to a
“problem”, presented through a distorted narrative frame.

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For example, many articles about agricultural technologies depict scien-
tists in white coats working in high-tech laboratories. These images are
intended to appeal to a sense of trust in science. They serve to minimise
fears of the featured technology. In such cases, when referring to those
responsible in your own communications, it can help to disrupt this as-
sumption by referring to them as “engineers” or “technologists” instead
of “scientists”, for example.

VISUALS FROM THIRD-PARTY SOURCES

Media outlets prefer to source visual materials themselves in the
interest of being independent. However, cost and time constraints
means they often accept visual materials from others. This provides
an incredibly powerful opportunity for proponents of both the domi-
nant and counter-narratives to get their messages across.

Visuals provided by third-party sources are credited. Check the cred-

its to see whether they have been provided by proponents of a dom-
inant narrative. Consider how you can counter any distorted visual
messages through your communications materials, or by providing
your own images to the media.

For example, photographs of people affected by — or protesting

against — an issue are widely published. If you can provide these,
make sure they are good quality and, ideally, include your main mes-
sage. Providing these sorts of photographs around political meet-
ings, where there is a lack of visual content for reporters, can be es-
pecially effective.

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D. MESSAGE

Journalists are charged with reporting in a balanced way but, consciously

or not, they often present messages in ways that reinforce the dominant
narrative.

1. List the main messages that each article conveys.

2. Is there a fair balance between quotes from each “side” of the argu-
ment; is each view fairly represented?
3. Check the list against your organisation’s key messages to assess
how widely they are being reported by the media. If they are, make a
note of how and when they are being reported. Are they presented
in a way that advances your campaign, or as a marginal voice (a jour-
nalistic “nod” to suggest that they’re reporting “both sides”). Do the
same exercise for the dominant narrative and compare the two lists.

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E. MESSENGER

Whoever is quoted within a news story about a particular issue has an

impact on how that issue is portrayed to the public.

1. Tally which groups are quoted most often, along with how many
people in each group are quoted, and create a chart to help analyse
why some groups are quoted more than others.
2. Check which quotes support the various opinions expressed in the
dialogue around an issue and assess whether each article presents
a balance of opinion, or not.
3. Make a note of how often and who is quoted as a representative of
your organisation or movement.

Look for quotes that support policymakers, academic experts, etc. Look
key people up online. Find out who they work for, who funds that work
and what the goals of that organisation or individual are. Keep in mind that
most large corporations employ public relations companies to manage
their communications. If you can, find out who they are. This will give you
an insight into the “machine” you are challenging, and the personalities
and power dynamics behind it.

Some corporations have invested in media analyses and commentary

around contentious issues, such as GMOs. Most of this investment is
confidential, yet it is worth conducting a quick online search to check. For
example, the Wellcome Trust funds this blog on scientific issues under
social debate. While these sources are funded by proponents of the dom-
inant narrative, they can provide valuable insights and angles to explore
when devising counter-narratives.

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STEP 04: DRAW CONCLUSIONS
Time estimate: 1.5 days

CAPTURE YOUR RESULTS

Take time to assess the findings you have captured and look for trends
across the categories above. If you have selected articles across differ-
ent moments (for example, around a series of decision-making political
meetings), you may identify changes in reporting styles or levels of bias
over time.

In general terms, when an emerging issue or new technology starts to at-

tract wider social debate, the media responds with a deeper level of ques-
tioning. Similarly, when an issue is under the political spotlight, media inter-
est is heightened, and reporters are actively looking for fresh story angles.
These moments represent key opportunities for intervention and influ-
ence by civil society because reporters are likely to listen more intently
to alternate views — and be open to new angles or “leads” to investigate.

List which outlets and/or specific journalists are more aligned with your
issue, and those who are not. Remember that media bias may be attribut-
ed to several reasons, not least being that many reporters may not have
investigated their story thoroughly for lack of time, or may have been
briefed by proponents of the dominant narrative. Consider whether some
reporters may benefit from a media briefing event, or a 1:1 meeting.

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ASSESS YOUR OWN COMMUNICATIONS

Look at your own media interventions to assess whether the key messag-
es and language used to convey them supports your narrative stance, or
inadvertently reinforces the dominant narrative. For example:

BIAS
Check whether your communications materials present the issue
in a way that counters any bias. Be careful to avoid reinforcing the
description of the dominant narrative in your counter-narratives —
approach the story on your own terms.

QUOTES
Check whether the quotes attributed to your “spokespeople” could
be adjusted to better address angles that are being ignored or mis-
represented. Check the tone of your quotes. Think about the values
your movement wants to portray, whether “trust” and “truth”, or “ex-
pertise” and “insight”, for example. Make sure all the quotes you use
make your values clear to a reader. While emotion can be effective,
keep in mind that many readers may not share your passion, so use
emotive language carefully and ensure it does not obscure your key
values.

LANGUAGE
Consider whether there are certain images, words, or tone you
should avoid using, or certain words or phrases you should start
using more. For example, some words are used inaccurately by
media. Other words are promoted by the proponents of an issue or
technology. Sometimes they use emotive metaphors to promote
the need for a technology, or negative imagery to describe those
who oppose it. Think about whether you could re-use their language
in your own communications to redirect the negative connotations
to describe the technology itself, for example.

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 STORYTELLING STYLES
Consider other styles of storytelling to counter misrepresentations,
such as case studies. For example, a case study on how African
small-scale farms provided food security for their communities
during the COVID-19 pandemic might help disrupt narratives of
need, used to justify the importation of controversial agricultural
technologies. This story is being sidelined by some aid agencies
because it doesn’t fit the narrative agenda of their donors.

VOICE
People can be more receptive to messages when they are delivered
by someone they trust, or identify with in some way. It is important
that those most affected by an issue are the primary voice, but in-
cluding other messengers can be a strategic way to reach different
audiences. These can range from celebrities to academics with a
good reputation in related fields. If they agree with your aims, and
are willing to provide “third-party endorsement” of your messages
through opinion editorials or interviews, their engagement can be
a powerful way to increase your movement’s reach and influence.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY

Assess whether there is value in publicising the power dynamics
and funding behind a particular issue or technology.

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STEP 05: IDENTIFY RECOMMENDATIONS
Time estimate: 1 day

1. Prioritise which actions will have the most impact for your movement,
and which can be implemented effectively within your resources.
2. Draw up a plan of action and a timeline. Actions may include:
A. A review of your messages and communications materials
B. Interview training for your key “spokespeople”
C. Organising a briefing event for (or 1:1 meetings with) influential
reporters you think would benefit from the provision of more accurate
facts and statistics, or from hearing your viewpoint
D. Engaging with people who can provide third party endorsement to
your messages, as experts or affected communities
E. Fine tuning your list of media contacts, and building your relationship
with influential reporters or outlets by responding quickly to interview
requests and providing them with new story angles or useful back-
ground information. You may also consider offering a story exclusively
to a trusted journalist on occasion.
F. Revising your communications plans going forward to focus more on
specific events that you found attracted significant media interest,
and possibly hiring your own photographer so you can offer media
outlets images of your protests at those events.

Present your findings and recommendations in your chosen format for

sharing with colleagues, such as a PowerPoint presentation. You may wish
to follow the analysis categories above when presenting your insights.

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Illustrations by Pilar Emitxin
Design by Tom Joyes

Image Credits
Page 5, Photo by Civil Eats
Page 23, Photo by Liyanawatte/Reuters
Page 29, Photo by Emilio Garcia
Page 43, Photo by Duong Tri
Page 49, Photo by Markus Spiske
Page 53, Photo by James Baltz
Page 56, Photo by Bannon Morissy

A GROWING CULTURE & ETC GROUP

IN COLLABORATION WITH LA VÍA CAMPESINA AND
THE ALLIANCE FOR FOOD SOVEREIGNTY IN AFRICA 2023