Decoupling from Land or Extending the View: The Divergent Spatial Imaginaries of Agri-food Tech

Abstract

Beginning around 2013, an agri-food tech sector coalesced, proffering countless technologies that promise a more sustainable food future. Yet exactly what that future looks like varies dramatically within the sector. Based on an intensive study of this sector, we examine two paradigmatic areas of innovation—alternative protein and digital agriculture—showing how the environmental promises of each translate into very different ideal uses of space. The spatial imaginary underpinning much protein innovation is contained, aiming to bring as much production as possible into highly delimited spaces, whereas the spatial imaginary of digital agriculture is expansive, facilitating farm management at a scale far beyond what a farmer can directly experience. Such divergent technological trajectories, we argue, have always existed in food and agriculture, but they are now incongruously paired within the agri-food tech sector. In addition to being contradictory in their own terms, both wrongly conflate a spatial imaginary with socio-environmental improvement.