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Pitching agri-food tech: performativity and non-disruptive disruption in Silicon Valley

Author

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  • Madeleine Fairbairn
  • Zenia Kish
  • Julie Guthman

Abstract

Food and agriculture have recently become focal points of tech sector innovation and financing. Rapidly multiplying agri-food tech startups are promising to import the tech sector’s trademark disruptive innovation into an industry they deem sclerotic, inefficient, and unsustainable. This paper interrogates the cultural and market frictions attending Silicon Valley’s foray into food and agriculture through the lens of what is perhaps the tech sector’s most prominent narrative genre: the public investment pitch. Building on scholarship that views pitching as a performative practice, we show how pitches serve to mediate the tech sector’s entrée into this established industry. Our analysis of four key moments of the agri-food tech pitch reveal how carefully curated framings of agri-food problems and solutions work to reconcile the world-changing ambition and profit-making potential demanded by Silicon Valley investors with the deeply entrenched political economic realities of food and agriculture. Our analysis also suggests a tendency towards ‘non-disruptive disruption’ (Goldstein, J., 2018. Planetary improvement: Cleantech entrepreneurship and the contradictions of green capitalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Despite nods to disrupting the established industry, the tech sector primarily offers incremental improvements on existing technologies, often developed or marketed in partnership with industry incumbents, underscoring the distinction between technological disruption on the one hand and genuine systemic transformation on the other.

Suggested Citation

  • Madeleine Fairbairn & Zenia Kish & Julie Guthman, 2022. "Pitching agri-food tech: performativity and non-disruptive disruption in Silicon Valley," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(5), pages 652-670, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:15:y:2022:i:5:p:652-670
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2022.2085142
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Mascha Gugganig & Karly Ann Burch & Julie Guthman & Kelly Bronson, 2023. "Contested agri-food futures: Introduction to the Special Issue," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 787-798, September.
    2. Kok, Kristiaan P.W. & Klerkx, Laurens, 2023. "Addressing the politics of mission-oriented agricultural innovation systems," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    3. Julie Guthman & Michaelanne Butler, 2023. "Fixing food with a limited menu: on (digital) solutionism in the agri-food tech sector," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 835-848, September.
    4. Hilary Oliva Faxon, 2023. "Small farmers, big tech: agrarian commerce and knowledge on Myanmar Facebook," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 897-911, September.
    5. Garrett M. Broad, 2023. "Improving the agri-food biotechnology conversation: bridging science communication with science and technology studies," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 929-938, September.
    6. Cornelius Heimstädt, 2023. "Making plant pathology algorithmically recognizable," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 865-878, September.
    7. Daniel Velden & Joost Dessein & Laurens Klerkx & Lies Debruyne, 2023. "Constructing legitimacy for technologies developed in response to environmental regulation: the case of ammonia emission-reducing technology for the Flemish intensive livestock industry," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(2), pages 649-665, June.
    8. Summer Sullivan, 2023. "Ag-tech, agroecology, and the politics of alternative farming futures: The challenges of bringing together diverse agricultural epistemologies," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 913-928, September.
    9. Karly Burch & Julie Guthman & Mascha Gugganig & Kelly Bronson & Matt Comi & Katharine Legun & Charlotte Biltekoff & Garrett Broad & Samara Brock & Susanne Freidberg & Patrick Baur & Diana Mincyte, 2023. "Social science – STEM collaborations in agriculture, food and beyond: an STSFAN manifesto," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 939-949, September.
    10. Sarah Ruth Sippel, 2023. "Tackling land’s ‘stubborn materiality’: the interplay of imaginaries, data and digital technologies within farmland assetization," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(3), pages 849-863, September.
    11. Sarah Ruth Sippel & Moritz Dolinga, 2023. "Constructing agri-food for finance: startups, venture capital and food future imaginaries," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 40(2), pages 475-488, June.
    12. Roche, Julian S., 2023. "The causes, course and consequences of the surge in Venture Capital AgTech investments," Working Papers 333555, University of Western Australia, School of Agricultural and Resource Economics.

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