A recent report from Health, Environment, Agriculture, and Labor (HEAL) Food Alliance argues that precision agriculture is “a costly distraction” from real climate solutions, and cautions policymakers against overreliance on it to solve agricultural challenges.
Precision agriculture (PA) refers to technologies including GPS, drones, robotics, and AI, used to efficiently apply chemical inputs on specific areas of a field. Public sector investments in PA technologies have been increasing–amounting to about US$11.1 billion in 2021, according to the HEAL Alliance–as corporations and lawmakers suggest that technologies can boost agricultural automation and productivity.
But HEAL’s report calls PA a “false solution that diverts attention and resources away from proven solutions.” They believe that regenerative farming methods such as intercropping, agroforestry, and silvopastoralism are more climate-resilient, and more accessible to small and mid-sized farms.
The wide-spread adoption of PA is a conflation between efficiency and sustainability, Celize Christy, Member Organizing Lead at HEAL, tells Food Tank. She says that while proponents of PA argue innovations can reduce the amount of water or fertilizer used per acre, it doesn’t cut the emissions from these fertilizers.
According to HEAL’s report, precision agriculture technologies were utilized on approximately 50 percent of U.S. corn and soybean acreage by 2010 to 2012. But data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows fertilizer use did not go down over this time—it actually increased. After 30 years of observing developments in the field, the Alliance concludes that there is minimal reliable evidence to support that PA has reduced the use of chemical inputs.
There are also concerns about the resources needed to power PA tools. According to Christy, as farms harness efficiency through technology, “precision ag might make one farm more efficient, but across the system it drives more extraction of water and energy to power the data centers.”
HEAL finds that the 2,600 U.S. data centers used to operate AI in agriculture were among the top 10 water users in the country’s commercial and industrial sectors as of 2022. The report calls this an example of the Jevons Paradox, the principle that increased resource efficiency can actually lead to an increase in resource consumption in the long-term.
“What [PA] has done is drive consolidation, putting more power and land into the hands of corporation giants like Bayer and John Deere,” Christy tells Food Tank. “Precision ag doesn’t transform agriculture; it just makes industrial systems more efficient at causing harm.”
PA technologies also disproportionately favor large farms, predominantly owned by white farmers, HEAL argues. Due to discriminatory land access and lending practices excluding Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, the U.S. Government Accountability Office finds that BIPOC farmers are more likely to operate small-scale family farms. HEAL also notes that BIPOC farmers are more likely to grow diversified specialty crops with regenerative practices. But their research shows that PA technologies are better suited to large monocropping systems of commodity crops like corn and soybeans. And research published in Journal of Rural Studies states that they can give inaccurate and unreliable assessments for more diversified cropping.
Considering the financial barriers to adopting PA, authors worry that these tools will further exacerbate the deeply-rooted racial and economic equities in agriculture. “High costs and data-driven platforms will push out small BIPOC farmers… it creates a future where farming is dictated by algorithms, not ecosystems,” Christy tells Food Tank. “It’s a model that prioritizes machines over communities, and efficiency over equity, deepening the very crises it claims to solve.”
HEAL calls for policymakers to reckon with the environmental and social costs that accompany the production and use of precision agriculture technologies. They recommend divestment from PA methods and more investment in federal support and incentives for practices that holistically reduce input use. Christy also wants policymakers to promote Farm Bill initiatives that better reach small, diversified, BIPOC producers. “Redirect funding toward practices that regenerate soil, strengthen rural economies, and prioritize equity,” she says.
HEAL also wants to see policymakers have greater oversight in PA use, and more collaboration with small and mid-size farmers to determine what practices benefit their production – including fair labor and pay practices. In turn, collaboration with farmers can support practices that naturally transform farming systems such as agroforestry and silvopasture, cover crops, integrated crops, and livestock production.
The HEAL Alliance already sees biodynamic farming systems, relying on agroecological practices such as intercropping and cover cropping, adopted across the country that have been shown to decrease emissions and increase nutrient availability—reducing reliance on chemical inputs. Now they want to see them adopted at scale.
“Climate solutions should serve communities,” Christy tells Food Tank. “Not corporations.”
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