Precision Agriculture: Surveillance Capitalism’s Shiny New Toy

Written by: Adam Assimakopoulos

Edited by: Sunny Bell

Agriculture technology has promised to “feed the world” ever since the Green Revolution in the mid-20th century. In 2025, digitization and data-driven “solutions” pervade democratic and empowered approaches to solving world problems. Precision agriculture is defined as:

A management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual plant and animal data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of agricultural production. (International Society of Precision Agriculture, 2025)

This article does not argue that “smart” technology contributes something inherently bad to farming practices; instead, I aim to emphasize what it denies. While biopolitics is understood to comprise an inclusive management stream for life and care of people, Browne et al. (2022) define technologies such as precision agriculture as necropolitics, a practice of exclusion and keeping out. Agriculture technologies designed to gather information and produce recommendations autonomously are necessarily mechanisms for surveillance. The authorization of surveillance technology competes with local and international sovereignty, human agency, and environmental health, instead prioritizing efficiency and private profit. This article first offers some brief examples of surveillance farming instruments. Then, it illuminates the role of capitalism in both driving inequality and undermining autonomy in the Global South. Finally, some theoretical contributions are discussed. This article encourages critical interpretations of the role that “smart” technology plays in sustainability, innovation, and global politics.

Surveillance technologies (also called “smart” technologies, though I reject that term for its inaccuracy) are unmanned and unsupervised machines. Unlike familiar farming automations – such as tractors, plows, shovels, and wheelbarrows – surveillance technologies are not governed by human cognition. Not only is this difference notable, but it is decisive in the transition from unproblematic to problematic farming strategies. In 2013, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International predicted that 80% of the future drone market would relate to agriculture (Browne et al., 2022). Drones survey broad stretches of land, which results in involuntary scrutiny of communities and people (Browne et al., 2022). For example, John Deere offers a platform for farmers to access data from sensors attached to farming equipment, including information on terrain conditions, weather, and financial viability (Klauser, 2018). Similarly, the PlantVillageNuru programme in East Africa allows farmers to report information to a computer algorithm that diagnoses crop diseases (Stone, 2022). At first glance, all of these examples appear to be intelligent, efficient, and helpful solutions to agricultural challenges – and that may be so. However, these practices quickly raise concerns when situated in wider contexts of neo-colonialism, privacy infringement, and lack of mobility.

The role of capitalism and private enterprise as stewards of rapid technological transition is not new. Tech firms have long branded themselves as purveyors of the solution to all of the world’s problems – reversing climate change, improving food security, and providing access to water, to name a few. These rescue narratives put forward by businesses aim to justify all of their rule-bending and shortcuts that would not otherwise be tolerated by international governments. Despite their adamance, tech businesses market their products to farmers as tools to enhance profitability (Stock & Gardezi, 2021). Indeed, tech companies’ good-natured, thematic narrative contrasts starkly with their on-the-ground value proposition. Browne et al. (2022) theorize this contrast as the newest “hyper-libertarian colonial formation,” conducted in large part by “tech bros.” (Browne et al., 2022, 465). Despite belaboured claims that innovation and entrepreneurialism will better future generations, there exists a corresponding belief that everything is “up for sale” (Browne et al., 2022, 466). Indeed, the idea that society ought to entrust all of its resources, money, and agency under the guise of a future shared benefit does not leave room for accountability or privacy. 

Moreover, the “investment” argument derives from a neoliberal school of thought. Technology, especially surveillance technology, is not a democratic pursuit (Browne et al., 2022, 473). Surveillance technology allows advertisers to purchase data about the conditions of farm terrain and sell their products to farmers accordingly. Stone (2022) argues that the individualization of farmers as sources of consumption enforces obedience through persuasive advertising messages. This advertising is not always obvious. The same automated technology that measures farming conditions can just as easily recommend a need for more fertilizer and even new farming technologies.

Thus, it is not surprising that areas in the Global South – which have long been framed by capitalism as sites for improvement – seem to always require more agrochemicals (Stone, 2022). Stock and Gardezi (2021) situate this trend as part of precision agriculture’s ambition to “establish new cyberspace frontiers to ensure the further penetration of capital into rural spaces unfettered by temporal limitations, reconfiguring labour arrangements in the process” (Stock & Gardezi, 2021, pp. 195-196). This ambition regularizes agriculture to abide by corporate interests.

Finally, I wish to incorporate some theoretical insights. According to Michel Foucault, biopolitics emerges out of sovereignty and discipline. While discipline aims to train the body, sovereignty refers to the capacity to take a life. Therefore, biopolitics amalgamates the two by facilitating the techniques required to “measure, quantify, classify, and evaluate” (Means, 2021, p. 1968). Concerns must then be raised when the means of surveillance agriculture become autonomous, while the beneficiaries are detached from the land being surveyed. Environmental destruction must also be emphasized. Precision agriculture’s dependency on algorithms denies the necessary social learning involved in land stewardship. Many Indigenous communities teach the significance of reciprocity in land surveillance (Browne et al., 2022). Put simply, surveillance must be accompanied by reception to enforce accountability and responsibility to the land.

Much like the Green Revolution, surveillance agriculture technologies must make themselves spectacular – peasants must be shocked into any change (Stone, 2022). Thus, the overwhelming and at times destabilizing neoliberal apparatus that is surveillance technology must be understood as a deliberate pursuit of societal re-organization. Agriculture is simply one limb of this project. In order to shock the world into submitting to technology as the sole steward of world problem-solving, private business must insist upon its interests while disguising its imperative for capital accumulation.

References

Browne, S., Klauser, F., & Wood, D. M. (2022). Conversation: surveillance/environment/nature/sustainability. Surveillance & Society, 20(4), 462-476.

International Society of Precision Agriculture. Precision Ag Definition. www.ispag.org. Retrieved 25 October 2025.

Klauser, F. (2018). Surveillance farm: Towards a research agenda on big data agriculture. Surveillance & Society, 16(3), 370-378.

Means, A. J. (2021). Foucault, biopolitics, and the critique of state reason. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 54(12), 1968–1969. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2021.1871895

Stock, R., & Gardezi, M. (2021). Make bloom and let wither: Biopolitics of precision agriculture at the dawn of surveillance capitalism. Geoforum, 122, 193-203.

Stone, G. D. (2022). Surveillance agriculture and peasant autonomy. Journal of Agrarian Change, 22(3), 608-631.