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REPORT
February 2026
Head In The Cloud
Challenging the false promise of digital agriculture and cultivating innovation from the ground up
This page is automatically translated from the English original using DeepL and may contain errors.
Today, ‘innovation’ has become synonymous with the rapid development of AI, precision agriculture, bioengineering, and automation. Governments and donors are investing billions in corporate-led digitalization of farming, promoted as essential for climate resilience and productivity.
Head In The Cloud examines how this shift is reshaping power in food systems – concentrating control in the hands of major technology and agribusiness firms, increasing farmer dependency, and reinforcing high-cost, high-input production models.
At the same time, the report documents farmer-led and community-based innovations that are strengthening soil health, conserving agrobiodiversity, adapting crops to climate change, and building resilient local food systems. These bottom-up approaches prioritize autonomy, ecological sustainability, and knowledge-sharing – yet remain underfunded and marginalized in policy and investment decisions.
IPES-Food calls for a reorientation of innovation systems to better serve people and the planet:
- Strengthen public policy for just and responsible innovation.
- Redirect research and funding to bottom-up, sustainable initiatives.
- Break up the power of Big Tech and Big Ag.
- Change the narrative on innovation.
Lim Li Ching, IPES-Food co-chair
We are witnessing a quiet takeover of farming by Big Tech. But farming by algorithm is not the future farmers asked for. Under the banner of innovation, tech giants are consolidating control over agriculture and biological heritage, sidelining the farmers who already grow our food in sustainable and resilient ways. We can choose a different path. We must reimagine and govern innovation differently. It’s time to reclaim innovation for people and the planet.
Lim Li Ching, IPES-Food co-chair
Pat Mooney, IPES-Food expert
The world’s food security is more uncertain than it has been in decades, amid escalating global crises. Yet Big Tech and Big Ag are jointly advancing proprietary AI, data platforms, and biotechnologies that narrow diversity when we need more of it, lengthen supply chains that should be shortened, and concentrate information that ought to be shared among farmers. But our study shows that bottom-up, ecosystem-grounded, farmer-led innovations are already responding to today’s food crises – despite policy barriers and limited public investment.
Pat Mooney, IPES-Food expert
Nettie Wiebe, IPES-Food expert & farmer
Real innovation doesn’t come from Silicon Valley – it comes from farmers, farmworkers, and Indigenous Peoples working with the land and with each other. Around the world, farmers are developing tools, restoring soil fertility, breeding crops for a changing climate, and managing pests ecologically. That’s real innovation. It builds resilience without locking us into debt or dependency.
Nettie Wiebe, IPES-Food expert & farmer
Yiching Song, IPES-Food expert
Our research shows that farmer-led seed systems and participatory breeding are among the most effective responses to climate change and biodiversity loss. These innovations integrate scientific and farmers’ knowledge, strengthening both ecosystems and livelihoods. If we are serious about climate action, policy and investment must recognise and actively support these systems, not sideline them.
Yiching Song, IPES-Food expert
Watch the report launch webinar recording
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