Abstract
Digital technologies, from precision agriculture and drone surveillance to blockchain supply chains and AI-driven agronomic advisors, are remaking traditional agricultural and forest-based livelihoods across the developing world. Proponents cast these tools as pathways to efficiency, market access, and ecological resilience. Critics counter that they deepen dependency on external corporations, erode indigenous knowledge systems, and reproduce colonial patterns of value extraction under new digital labels. This paper argues that neither framing captures the full picture. Drawing on political ecology, science and technology studies, indigenous knowledge frameworks, and the ethics of care, the paper examines how context, governance, and power determine whether a given technology strengthens or hollows out rural communities. It traces structural parallels between today’s digital agriculture push and the Green Revolution of the mid-twentieth century, showing how similar promises of productivity gains produced similar distributions of winners and losers. The analysis identifies several underexplored risks: algorithmic monoculture (where uniform AI recommendations reduce crop diversity at landscape scale), infrastructure fragility (where platform abandonment strands dependent users), and epistemic displacement (where app-based decision-making supplants observational skills that took generations to develop). The paper proposes symbiotic modernization as an alternative framework, one that measures technological success by whether it grafts onto existing knowledge systems rather than uprooting them. Practical pathways include open-source hardware and software, community data sovereignty protocols, technology intermediaries embedded in local institutions, and adaptive management cycles that treat deployment as an ongoing experiment rather than a finished rollout. The paper concludes that connectivity and autonomy can coexist, but only when communities set the terms of engagement.
References
Abiri R., Rizan N., Balasundram S., Shahbazi A., Abdul-Hamid H. (2023) Application of digital technologies for ensuring agricultural productivity. Heliyon, 9(12), e22601. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e22601
Adenle A., Wedig K., Azadi H. (2019) Sustainable agriculture and food security in Africa: The role of innovative technologies and international organizations. Technology in Society, 58, 101143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2019.05.007
Bahn R., Yehya A., Zurayk R. (2021) Digitalization for Sustainable Agri-Food Systems: Potential, Status, and Risks for the MENA Region. Sustainability, 13(6), 3223. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063223
Balyan S., Jangir H., Tripathi S., Tripathi A., Jhang T., Pandey P. (2024) Seeding a Sustainable Future: Navigating the Digital Horizon of Smart Agriculture. Sustainability, 16(2), 475. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16020475
Basso B., Antle J. (2020) Digital agriculture to design sustainable agricultural systems. Nature Sustainability, 3, 254–256. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0510-0
Berger P.L., Luckmann T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Penguin Books.
Chandra R., Collis S. (2021) Digital agriculture for small-scale producers. Communications of the ACM, 64(12), 75–84. https://doi.org/10.1145/3454008
Chandra V.S.S., Anand H.S., Albaaji G.F. (2024) Precision farming for sustainability: An agricultural intelligence model. Computers and Electronics in Agriculture, 226, 109386. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2024.109386
Finger R. (2023) Digital innovations for sustainable and resilient agricultural systems. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 50(4), 1277–1309. https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbad021
Gamage A., Gangahagedara R., Subasinghe S., Gamage J., Guruge C., Senaratne S., Randika T., Rathnayake C., Hameed Z., Madhujith T., Merah O. (2024) Advancing sustainability: The impact of emerging technologies in agriculture. Current Plant Biology, 40, 100420. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpb.2024.100420
George B. (2025) AI Solutions for Sustainable Agricultural Supply Chains. Agriculture and Biology, 1(1), 48–61. https://doi.org/10.70737/z3rm3z39
George B., Paul J. (2020) Digital transformation in business and society, New York: Springer International Publishing.
George B., Ravola M. (2024) Cultivating Sustainable Health in the Rural Mississippi: A Need Study for Green Economic Developmental Initiatives through the SNAP-Ed program. New Countryside, 3(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.55121/nc.v3i2.176
George B., Wooden O.S. (2025) AI Empowered: Pioneering African American Entrepreneurship in the Digital Age, Bingley (UK): Emerald Publishing Limited.
Hasana U., Swain S.K., George B., Silva A. (2022) Management of ecological resources for sustainable tourism: A systematic review on community participation in ecotourism literature. International Journal of Professional Business Review, 7(1), e0269. https://doi.org/10.26668/businessreview/2022.v7i1.269
Hrustek L. (2020) Sustainability Driven by Agriculture through Digital Transformation. Sustainability, 12(20), 8596. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12208596
Korstanje M.E., George B. (2022) The nature and future of tourism: A post-COVID-19 context, Palm Bay, FL: Apple Academic Press.
Kumari K., Nafchi A., Mirzaee S., Abdalla A. (2025) AI-Driven Future Farming: Achieving Climate-Smart and Sustainable Agriculture. AgriEngineering, 7(3), 89. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriengineering7030089
Kurgat B., Lamanna C., Kimaro A., Namoi N., Manda L., Rosenstock T. (2020) Adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture Technologies in Tanzania. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 4, 55. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00055
Latour B. (1990) Technology Is Society Made Durable. The Sociological Review, 38(1), 103–131. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1990.tb03350.x
Li Y., You X., Fu J., Zhou W. (2025) Mechanisms and effects of the digital economy on agricultural modernization: A sustainable development perspective. Journal of Environmental Management, 392, 126790. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2025.126790
Lidder P., Cattaneo A., Chaya M. (2025) Innovation and technology for achieving resilient and inclusive rural transformation. Global Food Security, 44, 100827. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfs.2025.100827
Markose N., Vazhakkatte T.B., George B. (2022) Sustainability initiatives for green tourism development: The case of Wayanad, India. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 15(2), 52. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm15020052
McKay L., McAloone Т., Pigosso D.С.А. (2025) Systematisation of behavioural design strategies to prevent rebound effects: A systematic literature review. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 61, 261–276. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2025.10.019
Montalvo-Romero N., Montiel-Rosales A., Purroy-Vásquez R., Quechulpa-Pérez P. (2023) Agro-Technological Systems in Traditional Agriculture Assistance: A Systematic Review. IEEE Access, 11, 123047–123069. https://doi.org/10.1109/access.2023.3329087
Mushi G., Di Marzo Serugendo G., Burgi P. (2022) Digital Technology and Services for Sustainable Agriculture in Tanzania: A Literature Review. Sustainability, 14(4), 2415. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14042415
Okech R., Haghiri M., George B.P. (2012) Rural tourism as a sustainable development alternative: An analysis with special reference to Luanda, Kenya. CULTUR – Revista de Cultura e Turismo, 6(3), 36–54.
Oldekop J., Rasmussen L., Agrawal A., Bebbington A., Meyfroidt P., Bengston D., Blackman A., Brooks S., Davidson-Hunt I., Davies P., Dinsi S.C., Fontana L.B., Gumucio T., Kumar C., Kumar K., Moran D., Mwampamba T.H., Nasi R., Nilsson M., Pinedo-Vasquez M.A., Rhemtulla J.M., Sutherland W.J., Watkins C., Wilson S. (2020) Forest-linked livelihoods in a globalized world. Nature Plants, 6, 1400–1407. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-00814-9
Purcell W., Neubauer T., Mallinger K. (2023) Digital Twins in Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Sustainability. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 61, 101252. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101252
Qin T., Wang L., Zhou Y., Guo L., Jiang G., Zhang L. (2022) Digital Technology-and-Services-Driven Sustainable Transformation of Agriculture: Cases of China and the EU. Agriculture, 12(2), 297. https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture12020297
Ronzhin A., Figurek A., Surovtsev V., Dibirova K. (2025) Digital Transformation and Precision Farming as Catalysts of Rural Development. Land, 14(7), 1464. https://doi.org/10.3390/land14071464
Sharma K., Shivandu S. (2024) Integrating Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things (IoT) for Enhanced Crop Monitoring and Management in Precision Agriculture. Sensors International, 5, 100292. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sintl.2024.100292
Shen Z., Wang S., Boussemart J., Hao Y. (2022) Digital transition and green growth in Chinese agriculture. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 181, 121742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121742
Singhania O., Swain S.K., George B. (2022) Interdependence and complementarity between rural development and rural tourism: A bibliometric analysis. Rural Society, 31(1), 15–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/10371656.2022.2062198
Subeesh A., Mehta C. (2021) Automation and digitization of agriculture using artificial intelligence and internet of things. Artificial Intelligence in Agriculture, 5, 278–291. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aiia.2021.11.004
Van Noordwijk M., Duguma L., Dewi S., Leimona B., Catacutan D., Lusiana B., Öborn I., Hairiah K., Minang P. (2018) SDG synergy between agriculture and forestry in the food, energy, water and income nexus: Reinventing agroforestry? Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 34, 33–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2018.09.003
Walsh T., George B. (2019) The ecotourism principle-practice divide: Factors that limit the applicability of ecotourism principles into practice. Revista Turismo Estudos e Práticas, 8(2), 170–198.
Yang C., Ji X., Cheng C., Liao S., Obuobi B., Zhang Y. (2024) Digital economy empowers sustainable agriculture: Implications for farmers’ adoption of ecological agricultural technologies. Ecological Indicators, 159, 111723. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolind.2024.111723
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.