AI images can obscure the reality of factory farms

Researchers discover AI image generation tools have a hidden feature steering generated scenes toward more idyllic representations, potentially obscuring the realities of factory farming. The finding raises questions about visual transparency in animal advocacy.

Home » On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg » On the Ground with Dani Nierenberg: Rethinking Who Gets a Seat at the Table, and Who Wins the World Food Prize A version of this piece was featured in Food Tank’s newsletter, released weekly on Thursdays. To make sure it lands straight in your inbox and to be among the first to receive it, subscribe now by clicking here. Greetings from Des Moines, Iowa. I’m here for the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogues, an annual gathering of people working to address hunger and improve food and agriculture systems. And I have a confession, I love attending the World Food Prize. I’ve been coming since the early 2010s. For a long time, part of what made it interesting was that there weren’t many people like me here, advocates for sustainable agriculture who wanted to talk about agroecology, biodiversity, how agriculture can be part of the solution to the climate crisis, and the power of farmers. The Dialogues bring together scientists, academics, policymakers, and plenty of representatives of Big Ag. This year’s announced speakers include leaders from ADM, John Deere, and Corteva. I used to joke that I was one of the few people who could attend the World Food Prize one week and the Organic Trade Association’s annual meeting the next. And, to the Foundation’s credit, I’ve been invited to moderate side events and emcee a plenary session. One year, I was grabbing a drink at the hotel bar when two men invited me to join them. One was a scientist at a major agrochemical company and the other led a farmers and ranchers organization. Why not sit and have a drink, I thought. After some very quick pleasantries, they said I was using my Twitter account to criticize their organizations. For the record, I hadn’t. When I explained that, their response was, essentially, “Well, people like you do.” And I thought to myself, what do you mean, people like me? I tried to explain that their assessment of me, and my work, was incorrect. The conversation went in circles, and I eventually hightailed it out of there. By the way, I’m now friendly with both of them. I even made it onto one’s Christmas card list. That experience stayed with me because it showed me how quickly we, all of us, can decide we already understand someone else based on preconceived notions. Sustainable agriculture advocate? We know what he thinks. Corporate scientist? We know what she believes. But we often don’t. We need more good food and agriculture advocates at events like the Borlaug Dialogues. We need food is medicine leaders, climate activists, public health advocates, young farmer organizations, Indigenous food leaders, and farmworker advocates. Their experiences can really help shape the conversations that happen there. And to be fair, more and more of these folks are coming to the Borlaug Dialogues. And all of us, Big Ag executives and agroecology advocates included, need to spend time in rooms where people disagree with us. We need to listen long enough to understand why we are on different ends of a very broad spectrum of what it will take to nourish both people and planet. The issues we’re working on are complicated. If we want real food and agriculture transformation, we’re going to have to get uncomfortable. Maybe not being accosted at the hotel bar uncomfortable. But uncomfortable enough to recognize that our comfort zones aren’t getting us very far. Which brings me back to the Prize itself. Often described as the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture, it grew out of Norman Borlaug’s vision for recognizing people who improve the world’s food supply. Borlaug, a plant pathologist widely known as the father of the Green Revolution, helped transform wheat production and later directed the wheat program at CIMMYT, the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center. I see how the Foundation is evolving. Under the leadership of former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Foundation CEO Tom Vilsack and President Mashal Husain, there are opportunities to broaden both the conversation and our understanding of who leads change. This year’s program includes actors Martin Sheen and Nick Offerman, as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureate and education advocate Malala Yousafzai. People whose work I admire, including Cary Fowler, Lawrence Haddad, and Mariangela Hungria, are also recipients of the World Food Prize. Their leadership is one of the reasons I think the World Food Prize and Borlaug Dialogues are important and why I keep coming back. But I want the conversation to keep evolving, too. We need to ask more difficult questions about what food and agricultural progress looks like, whose knowledge informs it, who benefits, who has power, and who doesn’t. For me, a Green Evolution, a term I stole from Bram Govaerts, the current Director General of CIMMYT, would mean putting farmers’ livelihoods, healthy soils, biodiversity, and nutritious diets at the center of how we measure success. And that requires looking around…

Read source: Food Tank