Unlocking sustainability? The power of corporate lock-ins and how they shape digital agriculture in Germany

Abstract

The digital transformation of agriculture is widely presented as a path to sustainability and a win-win strategy that benefits the environment, farmers, and consumers alike. However, recent studies show how the digital economy is characterized by monopoly structures, market concentration and corporate power that determine patterns of control over digital technology, distribution of benefits and value creation from data. In the field of agriculture, there is a lack of empirical research on lock-ins that examines in detail the logic of these effects, the actors, and the power dynamics behind them. Yet such insights are exactly what is needed to better understand the effects and to break unsustainable lock-ins towards more sustainable agri-food systems. Drawing on the literature on the political economy of food and agriculture, and on studies of innovation and sustainability transitions, this article aims to fill this research gap. Based on an empirical case study in Germany, it identifies systemic, technological, data, legal, soft, and discursive lock-ins that reinforce existing power relations and farmers' dependence on corporate agro-industrial farming models. It concludes that sustainable transformations in agriculture require a disruption of the identified lock-ins at multiple levels.