A report by the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems warns that major technology companies—including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, and Alibaba—are increasingly shaping agriculture through AI tools and data-driven farming systems. These tools analyze data from satellites, drones, and farm sensors to recommend which crops farmers should grow and how to manage their fields. Critics argue this creates a top-down system where corporate algorithms influence global food production rather than farmers’ local knowledge and needs.

Experts involved in the report warn that such systems could push farmers toward a narrow set of globally dominant crops—mainly corn, rice, wheat, soybeans, and potatoes—because these are the crops that industrial agriculture companies have the most data, seeds, and chemical inputs for. This could marginalize traditional or locally adapted crops, such as teff in Ethiopia, and force farmers into purchasing proprietary seeds, machinery, fertilizers, and pesticides from multinational corporations. Critics say this increases dependence on global supply chains and makes the food system more vulnerable to shocks like war or climate change.

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/03/tech-firms-ai-farming-tools-food-system-security