21 episodes

ETC Group is a small, international, research and action collective committed to social and environmental justice, human rights and the defence of just and ecological agri-food systems and the web of life. We focus on understanding and challenging corporate-controlled techno-industrial systems and exposing the dangers of the technological manipulation of life, especially in relation to climate justice and food security. We uphold peasant and indigenous ways of life and knowledge systems; food sovereignty; people’s control of technology; and just economies and governance.

ETC Group podcasts ETC Group

    • Technology

ETC Group is a small, international, research and action collective committed to social and environmental justice, human rights and the defence of just and ecological agri-food systems and the web of life. We focus on understanding and challenging corporate-controlled techno-industrial systems and exposing the dangers of the technological manipulation of life, especially in relation to climate justice and food security. We uphold peasant and indigenous ways of life and knowledge systems; food sovereignty; people’s control of technology; and just economies and governance.

    ¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 2

    ¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 2

    La cadena agroalimentaria digital. Entrevista a Pepe Godoy



    En esta serie de podcast del Grupo ETC, hablaremos de quién controla lo que comemos, y cómo van cambiando las cosas en este sector.  Comentaremos sobre las empresas que ganan cada vez más terreno en el mercado de semillas, maquinaria agrícola, distribución de comestibles. Cómo es que las compañías más grandes de tecnología, como Microsoft, Alfabet, Google y AliBaba están invadiendo el sector de producción de alimentos.  Estos cambios son poco analizados, así como lo que hoy se llama “la cosecha de carbono” y la agricultura digital.

    Les esperamos para compartir lo que el Grupo ETC ha investigado sobre quién controla y quién controlará nuestra alimentación.

    ---

    En este segundo episodio de Quién controla lo que comemos, hablaremos de las dos perspectivas de la alimentación que analiza el Grupo ETC: por un lado, la CADENA INDUSTRIAL DE PRODUCCIÓN DE ALIMENTOS, y por otro, LAS REDES ALIMENTARIAS CAMPESINAS. 

    La cadena industrial utiliza la inmensa mayoría del agua, las tierras y la energía que requiere la agricultura y sólo produce el 30 por ciento de la comida que llega a la gente. Está ampliamente documentado que una tercera parte de la comida que viene de la industria se desperdicia y que sus productos están llenos de venenos desde su origen. 

    El Grupo ETC ha calculado que por cada dólar que se paga por un alimento industrializado se deben pagar otros dos dólares en daños ambientales y a la salud. Y ante los problemas, las corporaciones repiten que la cadena alimentaria agroindustrial nos ayudará a sobrevivir el caos climático, y resolver el hambre con nuevas tecnologías. 

    • 23 min
    ¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 1

    ¿Quién controla lo que comemos? Episodio 1

    Los barones de la alimentación. Entrevista a Silvia Ribeiro

    En esta serie de podcast del Grupo ETC, hablaremos de quién controla lo que comemos, y cómo van cambiando las cosas en este sector.  Comentaremos sobre las empresas que ganan cada vez más terreno en el mercado de semillas, maquinaria agrícola, distribución de comestibles. Cómo es que las compañías más grandes de tecnología, como Microsoft, Alfabet, Google y AliBaba están invadiendo el sector de producción de alimentos.  Estos cambios son poco analizados, así como lo que hoy se llama “la cosecha de carbono” y la agricultura digital.  

    Les esperamos para compartir lo que el Grupo ETC ha investigado sobre quién controla y quién controlará nuestra alimentación.  

    En este primer episodio de Quién controla lo que comemos,
    hablaremos de las corporaciones clave del sistema alimentario industrial: nombres como Corteva, Cargill, Syngenta, Yara o John Deere… Qué están haciendo y por qué debemos preocuparnos. También comentaremos nuevas tendencias en la agricultura y la alimentación, como la presencia de creciente de las empresas de tecnología digital y de administración de inversiones.

    • 27 min
    Who Will control the Food System: episode 4

    Who Will control the Food System: episode 4

    Growing carbon is not like growing watermelons: the seductive trap of carbon farming and digital tech.

    Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

    ---

    In this fourth episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Camila Moreno, an independent researcher who works with social movements in Brazil and across Latin America on the social and environmental dimensions of biotechnology and agribusiness expansion.

    Camila presents Brazil as a huge agribusiness hub, well established as the centre of the “United Republic of Soybeans”, an expression she borrows from a Syngenta ad that references the whole southern cone of the Americas. 

    In this podcast, she explains how the “war against climate change” is being manipulated by the financial sector and agribusiness to impose digitalization on Brazilian farms, big and small alike, at an even faster pace than in the US. Carbon is at the centre of this “new climate economy”, and it is digitalisation that is supposedly enabling invisible, intangible carbon to be measured and thereby transformed into a commodity that can be bought and traded.

    This has been coupled with strong new corporate narratives about ‘regenerative agriculture’ and environmental markets 'resetting' nature. These so-called 'environmental services' are now established on global markets: carbon credits, biodiversity credits, water credits can all be bought and sold... 

    This new trend is changing the very identity of farmers. Where they might have grown watermelon, some are now farming carbon. Farmers struggling to compete with giant corporate farms and supermarkets are being lured into carbon farming with the promise of a new stream of income combined with the chance of being part of a cool, ‘high tech’ economy, with sensors and apps. This is an image which is being heavily promoted by private companies, governments and even international institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Even popular TV soap operas in Brazil are promoting the seductive power of drones in rural areas.

    But far from the spotlight, we can see that carbon farming comes with many pitfalls and risks which need to be considered, including the involuntary integration of family farms into the Industrial Food Chain, the loss of farmers’ autonomy, new surveillance mechanisms and new reasons for land grabbing. 

    Listen in as we explore these questions!

    To find out more about the digitalization of food and agriculture you can also watch our animation “Big Brother is Coming to the Farm: the Digital Takeover of Food” (available here in Bahasa
    Indonesia, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Swahili – and with versions in Arabic, Bisaya, Filipino, Hindi and Portuguese on the way).

    • 47 min
    Who Will control the Food System: episode 3

    Who Will control the Food System: episode 3

    Disruptive digital food and ag techs are invading indigenous
    territories in India.

    Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

    ---

    In East Godavari district, Andhra Pradesh, India, an Adivasi farmer gave his personal data and information, including his telephone number, to a representative of the Indian government. In India, “adivasi” is a collective term used to refer to indigenous people.

    The farmer later learnt that this information was made public and embedded in a GIS map. He was also made to join a Farmer Producer Group and was part of a platform called Producers Market which claims to facilitate direct relationships between consumers and producers using emerging technologies and digital devices, protecting farmers from small traders who are supposedly ‘exploiting’ them. The farmer was made to believe that this project was good for him as well as for agribusiness companies.

    But was it?

    Just how and why are big data and tech in agriculture moving into the territories of indigenous people in India without their knowledge or consent?

    How is the sustainability narrative being flipped by big business to penalise people living in the forests and reliant on shifting agriculture?

    And how are agribusiness corporations planning to squeeze small food traders out of the food supply chain?

    In our third episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Sagari R Ramdas, a member of the Food Sovereignty Alliance in India, about the impact of disruptive technologies in indigenous territories in India. Sagari is a veterinary scientist and a popular educator at the Kudali Learning Centre, where she facilitates education programs in social justice, food sovereignty and buen vivir. She writes and works on issues related to social justice, food sovereignty, livestock and ecological governance.

    Listen in as we explore these questions!

    To find out more about the digitalisation of food and agriculture you can also watch our animation “Big brother is Coming to the Farm: the Digital Takeover of Food” (available here in Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, Italian, Spanish and Swahili – and with versions in Arabic, Bisaya, Filipino, Hindi, and Portuguese on the way).

    • 36 min
    Who Will Control the Food System: episode 2

    Who Will Control the Food System: episode 2

    Tune into the next episode in our latest podcast mini-series, Who Will Control the Food System, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

    In this second episode, Zahra Moloo talks to Kelly Bronson, a social scientist at the University of Ottawa in Canada, about her research into the secretive legal agreements surrounding agricultural big data, to trace how it is used and with what consequences. In particular, what happens when big data is embedded in pre-existing arrangements of power and corporate strategies?

    Take tractors, for example. ‘Digital’ tractors are not like the vehicles of times past. They have built-in sensors that collect data and stream it to cloud-based infrastructure. Critically, the digital business model means that the farmer does not own the tractor, or the software that is embedded in the tractor, or even the data that is generated by the equipment. Rather, when a farmer purchases a tractor from a farm machinery company such as John Deere the farmer only receives a “license to operate the vehicle.” It is the company, Deere, that owns all of it.

    Not only that, but the farmer also has to pay (in addition to paying to use the tractor) for automated data services or data support services that will provide him with technical advice – which the farmer must follow – on what, when and how to plant in his own field. 

    What is this data that is generated from the tractor? How is data more generally captured in the context of agriculture? Who uses it? Why doesn’t the farmer own it? 

    In this second episode Zahra Moloo and Kelly Bronson talk about Bronson's new book, “The Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists, and Their Shared Politics of the Future.”

    Listen in as we explore these questions!

    • 44 min
    Who will control the food system? episode 1

    Who will control the food system? episode 1

    Industrial agriculture is not so much jumping on the “Food Systems Transformation” band wagon as trying to steal it!

    Don’t fall for the UN’s new Food Systems Coordination Hub hype about “Transforming Food Systems for Planetary Health”. The current corporate agenda, championed by this new “Hub” is firmly focused on hijacking the UN’s existing food systems spaces to force through yet another phase of Industrial Agriculture – promoting its technofixes as solutions to the very problems that it itself has caused, including in relation to climate change and biodiversity loss.

    Tune into our latest podcast mini-series, where we uncover just who's pulling the strings of industrial agriculture, dissect the latest corporate strategies, and take inspiration from the peoples and movements fighting back.

    In this first episode, Zahra Moloo, Neth Daño and Kavya Chowdhry talk through a recent trend: corporations that until now had nothing to do with food but are now pouring money into it. Which corporations are these, and why and how are they jumping on the band wagon? And what are the Big Ag giants up to amidst this scenario?

    Listen in as we explore these questions!

    • 42 min

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