Food studies scholars can no longer ignore the rise of big data

Abstract

Our essay invites food scholars to consider how the recent technological developments are making ‘big data’ increasingly relevant to our field. We offer an overview of the how big data and related crowdsourcing of information are penetrating the production and marketing of food, and reflect on what are potentially key ethical and epistemological questions that link big data with issues of sustainability and social justice in food systems. Our aim is to initiate a more deliberate dialogue between data scholars and food scholars to more comprehensively assess contemporary agri-food environments.

Keywords

• big data
• crowdsourcing
• agricultural 'apps'
• new technologies