Artificial Intelligence in Agroecology: innovation or hindrance in a field rooted in Indigenous Knowledge?

This webinar invites a wide community of thinkers and practitioners to reflect on a deceptively simple question — “Is agroecology forward or backward looking?”

Raised within the Agroecology Coalition’s Working Group on Research, Innovation and Education, this provocation opens a deeper conversation about how we define progress, how we value indigenous and local knowledge, and how emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence can either reinforce or erode these foundations.

The High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), in its background note on “AI, digitalization and data governance for food security and nutrition,”  identifies a number of important risks ranging from corporate concentration to data extraction and linguistic bias. The session will bring together academia, indigenous movements, farmer networks, data governance experts, technology developers and policy makers to explore how digitalization can support agroecology, what governance conditions ensure community self‑determination, and which forms of AI in low‑resource contexts makes sense to be prioritized.

Speakers: 

• Evan Fraser, Committee on World Food Security (CFS) High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) Steering Committee member
• Brigid Letty, Prolinnova, Institute of Natural Resource NPC (INR), Chief Scientist
• Janene Yazzie, IITC, Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM) to CFS
• Cédric Moullet, Deputy Director, FOAG, Head of Digitalisation and Data Management Directorate
• Marcelo Soares Souza, Agroecology Map, Software developer
• Lim Li Ching, IPES-Food, Co-chair
• Demian Vázquez Muñoz, General Director of the  Agri-food and Fisheries Information Service, Actions and Programs, Secretary of Agriculture, Mexico

Moderator: Cecilia Elizondo, Mexican Society of Agroecology, ECOSUR Agroecology Group member, Agroecology Coalition Research, Innovation and Education Working Group co-facilitator

This webinar is organized by the Agroecology Coalition (Research, Innovation and Education Working Group).