Abstract

This work presents an ethnography of food startups in the «new food economy». The process whereby startuppers digitalize the informal agricultural knowledge of local farmers is explored. The accumulation of digitalized data is here interpreted as a form social-machinic dispossession. The process separates informal food knowledge from social actors and incorporates it into algorithmic machines. As a consequence, small farmers do not receive any direct or indirect form of financial benefit from their collaboration with food startups. On the other hand, however, the food startups themselves are not economically sustainable yet: this means that the extractive potential of a data-rentier economy remains a future promise.