Head In The Cloud: Report launch webinar

Originally held on 25 February 2026

Available in EN | FR | ES | PT

Challenging the digital takeover of farming

Innovation in agriculture is increasingly led by Big Tech and Big Ag, embedding AI, data platforms, and automation into farming systems worldwide.

While promoted as a tool for productivity, this corporate-led digitalization is deepening farmer dependency, concentrating power over data and decision-making, and locking agriculture into costly, extractive pathways that fail to deliver resilience or equity.

At the same time, farmers, Indigenous Peoples, and local communities worldwide are developing innovations rooted in solidarity, dignity, local knowledge, and collective learning – approaches that are affordable, adaptive, and already strengthening climate resilience, biodiversity, and rural livelihoods. But these approaches are overlooked and under-funded.

This webinar marks the launch of IPES-Food’s landmark report ‘Head In The Cloud’. It exposes the false promise of digital agriculture and making the case for bottom-up, agroecological innovation systems that serve people, not profit.

Watch the full webinar

In this webinar, we explore:

• The key findings of our the ‘Head In The Cloud‘ report
• The politics shaping today’s agricultural innovation agenda
• Real-world experiences from farmer-led innovation systems
• Policy options for strengthening public policy for just and responsible innovation.

Speakers

• Lim Li Ching (IPES-Food co-chair & senior researcher at Third World Network (TWN))
• Pat Mooney (IPES-Food panelist & co-founder and former director of ETC Group)
• Song YiChing (IPES-Food panelist & senior researcher at the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy of the Chinese Academy of Sciences)
• Nettie Wiebe (IPES-Food panelist & organic farmer)
• Israel Navarette (Associate scientist at the International Potato Center)
• With closing remarks by Jane Maland Cady, Director of the Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems at the McKnight Foundation.

This webinar is available with simultaneous interpretation in English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

IPES-Food is grateful for the support of the McKnight Foundation Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems.