Digital Agroecology and the Inhuman: Paradigm Crossroads

Abstract A fourth agricultural revolution is pronounced on the strength of new digital technologies entering farming practice. Concerns that, left unchecked, this digital revolution will intensify the problems generated by the third agricultural revolution have led major supranational actors such as the UN and the EU to promote the embedding of state-of-the-art digital technologies within agroecology, a movement that foregrounds the wellbeing of both nature and farmers, drawing on traditional modes of knowledge and practice. The article examines whether this aspiration to combine “the best of both worlds” is feasible at the level of the basic commitments of agroecology and “agromodernism,” a term referring collectively to mainstream modes of agriculture that utilise industrial and digital technologies to maximise productivity. The article shows how agroecology and agromodernism constitute contrasting discursive frames and mindsets. At the same time, the article shows that agroecology and agromodernism share an oft-overlooked common ground. Drawing on the work of Martin Heidegger, Jean-François Lyotard and Frédéric Neyrat the article shows that agroecology and agromodernism are constricted by the technoscientific “world-picture,” in which the world is infinitely constructible in the hands of the human. The article argues, accordingly, for an alternative, “inhuman” agroecology. Such an agroecology should welcome any technology that resists the totalising tendency of evermore control over the land and foregrounds what exceeds human values and interests.