Zenia Kish
Zenia Kish
Ontario Tech University
Zenia Kish is Assistant Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University (Canada). She earned her PhD in American Studies at New York University, was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and previously taught at the University of Tulsa. Her work explores global digital media, food politics, digital agriculture, and philanthropy, and has been published in various leading academic journals. She is part of the UC-based Agri-Food Technology Research (AFTeR) Project, and serves as Associate Editor for the Journal of Cultural Economy. She is co-editor of the anthology Food Instagram: Identity, Influence, and Negotiation, which won the 2023 Best Edited Volume Prize from the Association for the Study of Food and Society. She is currently writing a book about the media cultures of philanthropy.
Briefly describe your work with agtech and explain what motivates you to invest your time in this work.
I am interested in bringing the tools and insights of media studies/critical data studies to digital transformations of agriculture. This has included research on global agricultural development and digital technologies (e.g. open data and smallholder farmers), and research on Silicon Valley’s move into ag tech over the last decade. I am interested in sustainable agriculture, the role of impact investing and venture capital in ag tech, and ag development.
Briefly explain any commitments to sustainability that you or your organization bring to your work on agtech innovation. Be as specific as possible regarding what kinds of social and environmental impacts you aim to produce, and the relevant strategies you are pursuing.
My various research collaborations are focused on knowledge creation connected to sustainability in ag tech innovation, including analyzing discourses of sustainability and how they do and don’t compare to actual practices.
Our research and this workshop aim to investigate tensions between the demands/imperatives of the tech-finance industry and the demands/imperatives of social-environmental problem solving. Please comment on this problem frame in general, and in relation to specific examples from your own experience.
Our research in Silicon Valley ag tech has been closely engaged with the limitations of bringing the venture capital model to agriculture, including due to the high risk tolerance, tech culture bravado that seeks to find “problems” to match up with their existing tech/frameworks, the relative lack of expertise in ag, etc. The reigning ideology assumes that more tech is always socially and environmentally progressive, but that is not empirically substantiated, and our work questions the dominant Silicon Valley presumptions rooted in a generally uncritical tech optimism.
To investigate the tensions suggested above, we rely on the concept of “mission drift”. We understand mission drift as a tendency for social and environmental impact commitments of individuals and organizations to leak out over time due to pressures and opportunities to expand revenue, valuation and capital gains. Our project aims to investigate mission drift applied to entrepreneurial ventures as well as to organizations dedicated to supporting innovation. Please comment on this thesis in general, and in relation to specific things you have experienced where possible. To the extent you find this thesis useful, what strategies can you identify to defend against mission drift?
I look forward to learning from others on this topic at the workshop.
Please share something you would like to take away from the workshop.
I look forward to meeting the diverse array of participants and learning from those who work outside our main ambit in Silicon Valley. It is definitely representative of ag tech in general, and I know there is much to learn from those working in other sectors, geographies, approaches, etc.