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Algorithmic Farming and the Politics of Optimization: A Critical Review of Artificial Intelligence in Climate-Smart Agriculture
Artificial intelligence is increasingly positioned as a transformative force for climate-smart agriculture, promising simultaneous gains in productivity, efficiency, and sustainability. Across agricultural policy, innovation systems, and digital farming markets, AI is presented as a solution to climate uncertainty, resource scarcity, labour pressures, and food-security demands. This review examines that promise through a critical lens. The dominant narrative surrounding AI-enabled climate-smart agriculture often treats optimization as a neutral technical process. Yet algorithmic systems do not merely improve farming decisions; they also define what counts as efficiency, which outcomes are prioritised, and whose knowledge becomes authoritative. This raises important questions about power, agency, and sustainability. The objective of this critical review is to interrogate the politics of AI in climate-smart agriculture. It synthesises evidence on the tensions between productivity, efficiency, sustainability, farmer agency, data sovereignty, and governance. The review asks how algorithmic optimization reshapes agricultural futures and who benefits from this transformation. The review draws on  peer-reviewed articles published across agricultural innovation, sustainability science, digital agriculture, artificial intelligence, and critical data studies. Rather than reporting new empirical data, it develops a critical synthesis of existing debates and identifies conceptual gaps in current scholarship. The review finds that algorithmic farming is not simply a technical evolution of precision agriculture. It is a contested political terrain in which sustainability goals, commercial interests, data infrastructures, and farmer autonomy are negotiated. A critical research agenda is needed to ensure that AI contributes to equitable, democratic, and ecologically resilient agricultural futures.
Journal of Intelligent Agriculture and Food Systems
Review | Open access | 15 March 2024 | Article: 1

Artificial Intelligence for Precision Agriculture Under Climate Stress: A Systematic Review of Decision Models, Data Sources, and Sustainability Outcomes
Climate stress is reshaping the operational conditions under which agricultural decisions are made. Drought, heat, flooding, salinity, and increasingly variable weather patterns intensify uncertainty around irrigation, fertilisation, pest management, crop selection, and yield planning. Precision agriculture has therefore become a central domain in which artificial intelligence is expected to support adaptive, data-driven decision-making. This systematic review examines how artificial intelligence decision models are used in precision agriculture under climate stress. The review focuses on three connected dimensions: the model families used to support decisions, the data sources on which these models depend, and the sustainability outcomes that are reported. The objective is to clarify whether current evidence supports the claim that artificial intelligence can deliver more resilient and sustainable agricultural management. The review synthesises peer-reviewed journal articles published. The study selection followed a PRISMA-oriented logic, using predefined search strings, inclusion criteria, and screening stages to identify relevant work on machine learning, deep learning, remote sensing, sensor-based agriculture, irrigation optimisation, yield prediction, crop disease detection, and sustainability assessment. No new empirical field data were generated. The evidence base shows rapid expansion in machine learning and deep learning applications, especially for yield prediction, irrigation management, crop monitoring, plant disease detection, and smart farming decision support. Satellite imagery, UAV data, IoT sensors, weather variables, soil information, and farm-management records appear as the dominant data sources. However, the review also identifies uneven attention to climate stress conditions, limited integration of long-term climate projections, and inconsistent reporting of sustainability outcomes.The review concludes that artificial intelligence for precision agriculture under climate stress is technically promising but methodologically fragmented. Most studies emphasise model accuracy, yield improvement, or input optimisation, while fewer evaluate environmental trade-offs, social impacts, farmer livelihoods, or long-term resilience. A more rigorous, transparent, and sustainability-centred research agenda is needed to move the field beyond predictive performance toward climate-resilient agricultural decision systems.
Journal of Intelligent Agriculture and Food Systems
Review | Open access | 15 March 2024 | Article: 2