Chapter-01: The Digital Divide, Data Power and Structural Exclusion in Global Agriculture

Digital agriculture is widely promoted as a transformative pathway for enhancing productivity, market integration, and financial inclusion among smallholder farmers. Through mobile platforms, precision technologies, digital marketplaces, and data-driven advisory systems, it promises to reduce informational asymmetries and connect farmers to global value chains. However, beneath this optimistic narrative lies a deeper political economy of exclusion in which digital technologies frequently reproduce and intensify existing agrarian inequalities. This chapter critically examines the digital divide in global agriculture by analysing how disparities in access, digital literacy, infrastructure, institutional support, and platform governance intersect with class, caste, gender, geography, and landholding size. Drawing on global evidence and the fragmented agrarian structure of India, the chapter identifies four major pathways through which digitalisation amplifies inequality: differential technology adoption, market concentration and price squeezes, data dispossession and extraction, and exposure to financialised risks. Although smallholders constitute nearly 83 percent of farms globally, they produce only around 35 percent of total food output and remain disproportionately excluded from the benefits of digital transformation. Limited connectivity, low bargaining power, and dependence on corporate platforms often marginalise them further within digital agri-food systems. The chapter challenges technological solutionism and argues that digitalisation without social justice can deepen structural exclusion rather than promote empowerment. It therefore advocates a more inclusive framework grounded in data sovereignty, equitable digital infrastructure, public regulation, and farmer-led governance models to ensure that digital agriculture advances sustainability, dignity, and distributive justice rather than extraction and dependency.