Chapter-30: Algorithmic Sovereignty and Adaptive Governance in Digital Agriculture: A Polycentric Policy Framework for Resilient, Inclusive, and AI-Driven Agrifood Futures

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain technology and traceability, satellite data, robotics, and predictive climate data are ushering in a new era of digital transformation in agriculture around the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization has calculated that food output would need to grow by almost 70% by 2050 to keep up with the world's growing demand for food, while the World Bank's estimates is that digital technologies can boost smallholder productivity by 20-35% and cut supply chain inefficiencies by close to 30%. Despite these opportunities however, governance around digital agriculture is still fragmented, asymmetric and very platform dependent. Current agricultural policy is under-equipped to respond to issues such as algorithmic monopoly, data colonialism, cross-border governance of agritech, digital divide in rural areas, cybersecurity risks, and the exclusion of people and the environment in agricultural policy decision-making. The paper presents the new concept of “Algorithmic Sovereignty in Agriculture” and proposes a framework “Adaptive Polycentric Governance Framework” (APGF) to guarantee the equitable digital transformation in agrifood systems. This study brings together the theory of public policies, computational governance, institutional economics, cybersecurity resilience, and digital ethics into an integrated interdisciplinary model. It empowers policy makers with a governance framework that strikes the right balance between innovation incentives, transparency, sustainability and farmer autonomy via comparative policy analysis and systems-based conceptual modelling. The paper also proposes a multi-dimensional evaluation model to measure governance readiness, the Agricultural Digital Governance Index (ADGI), which is composed of six factors: infrastructure, accountability in AI, rights to agricultural data, institutional trust, rural digital literacy, and environmental sustainability. The results indicate that forecasts of potential reductions in agricultural data asymmetry, rural digital participation, and climate resilience efficiency for countries implementing an adaptive governance structure are 42%, 37%, and 29%, respectively. The study proposes a policy trajectory with transformative impacts for the future of agricultural governance in the era of intelligent systems and decentralized economy.