We are excited to invite you to the launch of the Digital Ecologies Network. As part of this event, Matthew Canfield from Leiden Law School will be delivering a talk on the digital agricultural "revolution" in Majority World.

The event will be chaired by Sebastián Lehuedé (Digital Humanities) and followed by a drinks reception.

The digital agricultural “revolution”: Resisting surveillance agriculture in Majority World

Digital agriculture is being heralded as a solution to food insecurity, climate change, and rural poverty. Like previous agricultural revolutions, it extends long-standing processes of extraction from rural spaces, channeling new value from the countryside to external actors. Beyond rent extraction, however, digital agriculture is also reorganizing relations of knowledge, control, and authority within food systems. As these technologies are introduced into food systems across the Majority World—where agriculture remains dominated by small-scale producers—they risk deepening both state and private control over agriculture and undermining the autonomy of small-scale food producers. This talk traces the continuities of digital agriculture with earlier agricultural revolutions and examines the role of activist-scholarship in supporting agrarian movements resisting “surveillance agriculture.”

Speaker:

Matthew Canfield is Associate Professor of Law and Society & Law and Development at the Van Vollenhoven Institute for Law, Governance, and Society at Leiden Law School. His research sits at the intersection of human rights, global governance, and environmental politics, focusing on rights-based approaches to food systems. He is author of Translating Food Sovereignty: Cultivating Justice in an Age of Transnational Governance, examines how transnational food sovereignty movements are transforming the meaning and practice of human rights in their struggle build more sustainable and equitable food systems. Currently, he is the Principal Investigator of Data Governance for Sustainable and Equitable Food Systems (DigiFood), an ERC-Consolidator funded project (2025-2030). The project examines emerging forms of agricultural data governance at the transnational level, with a specific focus on Kenya, India, and Colombia.

Digital Ecologies

Digital Ecologies is an interdisciplinary network dedicated to advancing research, dialogue, and public engagement on the entanglements of digital technologies with environmental, social, and political ecologies. We foster critical inquiry into the material infrastructures, labor relations, cultural imaginaries, and policy arrangements that sustain digital systems, from data centers and extractive supply chains to platforms, algorithms, and networked devices. You can check more details, people and events on the network's webpage.