Imagining agri-food futures across digital divides: Agribusiness and family farmers in Minas Gerais, Brazil

The widespread, uneven, and often contradictory use of digital technologies is transforming agri-food systems. Agriculture 4.0 is prompting producers to reimagine their farming futures, particularly in terms of environmental concerns, rural exodus and labor dynamics. Yet, emerging scholarship has largely overlooked how these imagined futures intersect with the persistent digital divide in rural areas. How do agribusiness actors and family farmers envision digital agri-food futures differently? To explore this question, we examined the case of the South of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a region recognized as one of the largest coffee producers in the world and home to other agricultural commodities such as sugarcane and soy. We conducted an online survey with 45 participants, followed by fieldwork visits and in-depth interviews with 11 representatives from large companies and start-ups and 5 agribusinesses providing the agribusiness perspective, which we compared to interviews with 16 family farmers. Our findings reveal that significant agribusinesses and family farmers anticipate the impact of digital technologies on their lives and productive practices. Notably, most participants believe that digital agriculture will further concentrate power in the hands of agribusiness. If Agriculture 4.0 is implemented without addressing the digital divide, agribusiness is poised to reap many of its benefits while family farmers risk becoming further marginalized. Bridging this divide is essential to ensure that the digital transformation of agriculture does not exacerbate longstanding rural inequalities in the Global South.