In recent decades, the convergence of digital technologies, material sciences and biotechnology has initiated profound transformations in global production models, promoted under the banner of Industry 4.0 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Agriculture has also been drawn into this process, propelled by public policies such as the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (2023–2027) and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Digitalisation is presented as an answer to the climate-environmental crisis and as a path towards sustainable development. However, a critical reading reveals the traits of a new green agrarian extractivism: a model that concentrates capital, power and knowledge at the expense of labour, nature and local knowledge, thereby reducing peasant autonomy. This chapter analyses these transformations in the agrifood district of Foggia, based on ten years of field research with a focus on the conditions of migrant workers, and the processes of digitalisation in 2024–2025. The methodology combines participant observation, interviews with various actors in the supply chain (farmers, technicians, researchers, trade unionists, civil servants), and critical literature, in order to historically reconstruct and politically interpret the established extractivist model in the territory.
Digitalisation for Green Agrarian Extractivism in Mediterranean Europe: Dynamics of Change in the Agrifood Enclave of Foggia, in Apulia (Italy)
Carmelo Buscema;Alessandra Corrado
;Francesco Saverio Caruso
2026-01-01
Abstract
In recent decades, the convergence of digital technologies, material sciences and biotechnology has initiated profound transformations in global production models, promoted under the banner of Industry 4.0 and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Agriculture has also been drawn into this process, propelled by public policies such as the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (2023–2027) and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Digitalisation is presented as an answer to the climate-environmental crisis and as a path towards sustainable development. However, a critical reading reveals the traits of a new green agrarian extractivism: a model that concentrates capital, power and knowledge at the expense of labour, nature and local knowledge, thereby reducing peasant autonomy. This chapter analyses these transformations in the agrifood district of Foggia, based on ten years of field research with a focus on the conditions of migrant workers, and the processes of digitalisation in 2024–2025. The methodology combines participant observation, interviews with various actors in the supply chain (farmers, technicians, researchers, trade unionists, civil servants), and critical literature, in order to historically reconstruct and politically interpret the established extractivist model in the territory.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
