The agri-food sector is experiencing a quiet but significant shift as many farmers, advisors, and value-chain professionals step back from social media due to misinformation, toxicity, and declining trust.

A recent survey of Ontario agri-food sector participants found that 43.1% of respondents had reduced or stopped using at least one social media platform. Key reasons included misinformation, limited meaningful engagement, and anti-social behaviour.

These findings are important for agricultural communication and extension. When trusted experts disengage from digital spaces, the sector loses critical voices needed to counter false information, share evidence-based knowledge, and support strong professional networks.

This research aims to encourage deeper discussion on how the agri-food sector can build healthier, more trustworthy, and evidence-based online spaces for farmers, advisors, researchers, and industry partners.

The research was funded by the Food from Thought Program at the University of Guelph

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Congratulations to the lead author, Carter Cousineau, and co-author Rozita A. Dara for this recognition. The publication came out of a project of Rozita Dara’s lab, AI for Food.

This paper advances the discussion of trustworthy AI from high-level principles to the realities of AI system development and organizational implementation. From the perspective of AI developers, it identifies key barriers such as fragmented global regulations, inconsistent definitions, limited engineering tools, and gaps in implementation standards. It also brings together governance mechanisms, role responsibilities, development processes, organizational culture, and data infrastructure into a unified framework for understanding how trustworthy AI can move from theory into practice.

Thanks to the editorial boards of the Data and Information Management, a journal with an impact factor of 8.3, and we hope this work contributes to ongoing efforts to build AI systems that are responsible, transparent, and trustworthy in real-world settings.

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During the webinar, Uduak shared her research methods and fieldwork process. Building on an exploratory survey and interviews, she organized a capacity-development workshop for extension professionals in Southwest Nigeria. In the workshop, she led discussions on the need to evaluate AI outputs in resource-constrained settings, focusing on how to assess AI-generated information and ensure that the advice remains relevant to the local rural context. She highlighted generative AI limitations and risks, such as data privacy, misinformation, and the potential to widen gender and digital divides. Staff from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) provided technical guidance on prompt engineering, equipping participants with foundational skills to craft effective prompts and ensure relevant output.

This workshop led into an action research phase, giving key actors hands-on experience in applying generative AI to their daily work. Through this fieldwork, Uduak demonstrated strong community engagement, research, leadership, and project management skills. Working directly with end users provided her with a deeper understanding of how user experiences and perspectives shape technology adoption. Uduak concluded her presentation by sharing initial findings, reflecting on lessons learned, and outlining her knowledge mobilization plans. Her research contributes to broader conversations on evidence-based policy development and user-centered design, aiming to build stronger agricultural information systems to tackle climate change and food insecurity.

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(The blog was written by the author based on his Major Research Paper)

Since global agricultural systems are now facing the severity of climate change, unverified misinformation about climate change on social media is complicating agricultural decision-making. For example, inaccurate predictions of rainfall or severe weather may lead farmers to make incorrect assumptions about planting timing, which will immediately result in losses in crop yield (Daume et al., 2023). To address this, we conducted a study that investigated the potential of using the VADER sentiment analysis tool and a random forest model to effectively detect false information in agricultural climate-related text on Twitter.

We built a composite detection model based on sentiment, linguistic, and metadata features. It starts with the extraction of tweet sentiment polarity measures (compound sentiment scores and sentiment shift frequency) by utilizing a widened VADER lexicon. The text is, in turn, represented as a 5000-dimensional array using TF-IDF, and the number of times an exclamation mark/question mark has been used, and the frequency of occurrence of agricultural terminology is also counted. Metadata features include user influence (logarithmic transformation of the number of followers), user influence (seasonal weight), and time of publication. Once all the features have been concatenated into a 1510-dimensional vector, a random forest algorithm is used to train the model, which is then optimized via grid search and SMOTE over-sampling.

The experiment used 16465 agricultural climate tweets, and the model achieved outstanding performance in accuracy (0.912) and recall (0.931). Study disclosed that misinformation was highly emotionally polarized with a median composite sentiment score of-0.4 and 0.2 in the cases of authentic material. It is also important to note that the average number of exclamation marks in false tweets is 3, and the correlation coefficient between frequency and labelling as false was 0.86, the highest at which the element was used as a discriminative indicator. Misinformation was negatively associated with user influence (r = -0.79), implying that it was more likely to be propagated by low-influence accounts. The rate of emotional oscillations (r=0.67) also indicated that readers have much in common, as misinformation can easily influence a person by abruptly switching mood.

The real-time monitoring tool developed as part of the current study is being implemented and can quickly identify high-risk content (e.g., tweets with 4 or more exclamation marks and an emotion score of 0.7 or less) during rumour waves (e.g., extreme weather causing total crop failure). Nonetheless, the existing model is restricted in three aspects: first, the scope of its data includes only Twitter posts in English, which is unlikely to cover multi-lingual agricultural areas. Second, its contribution to the seasons is low, meaning the distribution of false information is not limited to the farming schedule. Third, the fixed emotion dictionary is inadequate for keeping up with changing topics, and an updated real-time information system must be created using a TF-IDF-based update mechanism.

In the next phase, the research may focus on developing multilingual models, integrating image-based sentiment analysis, and designing time-series features aligned with crop growth cycles.

Reference

Daume, S., Galaz, V., & Bjersér, P. (2023). Automated framing of climate change? The role of social bots in the twitter climate change discourse during the 2019/2020 Australia bushfires. Social Media+ Society, 9(2).

Choudhary, A., & Arora, A. (2021). Linguistic feature based learning model for fake news detection and classification. Expert Systems with Applications, 169, 114171.

Al-Rawi, A., et al. (2021). Twitter’s fake news discourses around climate change and global warming. Frontiers in Communication, 6, 729818.

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(The blog has been written based on her Major Research Paper)

When I first set out to study Wassa Akyempim — a mining area in the Western Region of Ghana — I thought I knew what to expect: gold under the ground, big companies over it, promises of development somewhere in between. What I didn’t realize was just how complicated, personal, and often frustrating the process of “community development” through mining is.

At the heart of it all are Community Development Agreements (CDAs) — formal contracts between mining companies and local communities that are supposed to guarantee that host communities receive their fair share of the benefits. These may be infrastructure, jobs, wages, and social services. It sounds like a win-win on paper. But in fact, it’s often messy.

Who Gets a Seat at the Table? Really!

One of the first things that emerged from my fieldwork is how really skewed the power balance is when it comes to bargaining these contracts. You have big foreign-owned mining companies with legal teams and policy-advisory teams working one side of the table, and rural communities — many afraid to speak or not knowing how to speak for themselves — working the other.

The result? That plan was top-down, and communities often feel left out in processes that are ostensibly aimed at helping them. Sometimes, what are counted as traditional chiefs or a few “representatives” are consulted, while the young, female, and everyday residents are left out. People repeatedly said to me in plain local language: “We’re not making these decisions, but we have to live by them.”

The Misinformation Problem Is Real
Something else that came through very clearly in my research was the issue of misinformation — not as a tangential issue, but as a real impediment to trust and cooperation. What their CDA actually contained was not really understood by many residents. Others have confused Environmental Impact Assessments and signed benefit agreements. Others had heard false rumours of job openings or company promises, and other unscrupulous illegal miners have often tried to worsen the already unstable relationship.

Fake recruitment posters, I was told, also prompted people to walk off jobs in expectation of better mining wages that never materialized. When people feel they lack information or have been misled, mistrust builds quickly. And mistrust, as I discovered, can result in protests, discord, and the erosion of dialogue between corporations and communities.

Capacity Not Just a Fancy Word — It’s the Missing Link
One consistent theme in the literature and on the ground is that capacity counts. Communities can’t engage in informed negotiations for fair agreements that hold companies accountable if they don’t fully grasp the terms or implications. That’s not just a technical problem. It’s a justice issue.

There has to be investment in legal literacy, in negotiation training, in independent advisory support. Without it, “participation” can start to look performative. Communities don’t just deserve a seat at the table — they need interpersonal skills to speak, question, and decide.
Farther Than the Borehole: What Development Does and Does Not Do
I also knew that many community members were not praying for miracles — they were praying for honesty, for action that follows through on words, for an opportunity to have a say in the future that will be theirs. Yes, infrastructure matters. But people also spoke about a long-term need for support for their livelihoods, youth skills training, health, and the environment. And, most importantly, they want to be part of the conversation, not just passive consumers.

Where Do We Go from Here?
I didn’t find a one-size-fits-all answer in my research. But it did leave me with a stronger conviction that development can’t be delivered — it’s got to be co-created. CDAs could do that, but only if we rethink them as real social contracts rather than just corporate obligations, as is the case in a country like Ghana. That means:
Expanding everyone’s participation to all sorts of voices, not just the customary few elites. Developing capacity before negotiations start, so that communities know their rights and options. Confronting misinformation from our community head-on with straightforward, consistent community engagement. It means moving from extractive to collaborative thinking — from treating communities as stakeholders to treating them as partners.

Final Thoughts
Mining is not going away, especially in resource-rich Ghana. But the nature of community development in mining towns must change, too. I hope this work might add to that evolution in some small manner. The implications for researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers are clear: listen to those most affected and then design with — not just for — them.

The post Mining, Misinformation, and Marginality: Rethinking Development in Ghana’s Goldfields and Voices from the Goldfields appeared first on Misinforesearch.

By Nasir Khan

In April 2025, Meta (the company behind Facebook, Instagram, and Threads) officially ended its U.S.-based fact-checking program. This decision wasn’t secret, Meta announced it earlier this year, but now that it’s happened, we’re starting to see the consequences.

Instead of using professional fact-checkers to review false or misleading content, Meta has switched to a new system where users can add “context” notes to posts. These notes are voted on by other users. If enough people agree that the note is helpful, it becomes visible.

Meta says this gives people more control over the information they see. But here’s the issue: this change makes it much easier for false information to spread — especially about climate change and food systems.

Why Climate and Food Misinformation Spreads So Easily

Climate change and agriculture are complicated topics. They involve science, government policies, global trade, and personal lifestyle choices. That makes them easy targets for misinformation, especially when people are worried about their food, land, or future.

One common example of false or misleading claims that go viral online is “Climate change is a hoax to control what we eat.”

These kinds of posts often spread quickly because they tap into fear and frustration. They may contain a grain of truth, but they twist the facts or leave out important context.

Before April 2025, Meta had a system where independent fact-checkers could label this kind of content as misleading and limit how far it spread. That system is now gone.

What Replacing Fact-Checkers with “Community Notes” Means

The new system puts fact-checking in the hands of users. In theory, this sounds more democratic. But in reality, it’s risky.

Here’s why:

• Anyone can suggest a correction, but there’s no guarantee it’s based on facts or science.
• Posts only get corrected if a large group of people vote the same way, so truth becomes a popularity contest.
• Complex topics like climate policy or food production can’t always be explained in a short note.

As a result, many misleading posts may not get corrected at all, or worse, they might get liked or shared even more.

What Could Happen Next

With no professional fact-checkers reviewing posts, we may see:

• More viral falsehoods about climate solutions, food shortages, or farming policies.
• Conspiracy theories spreading unchecked, like claims that global climate goals are secretly about population control or land grabs.
• Less trust in real scientific research, as platforms no longer signal what’s verified and what’s not.

We’ve already seen how false claims about fertilizer bans or “globalist agendas” can lead to protests and political backlash, especially in Europe and North America. Now that Meta has stepped back, we expect these kinds of narratives to spread even faster.

Why This Matters

Climate change is real, and the way we grow, eat, and trade food is a big part of the solution. But real progress depends on people having access to accurate information.

If social media is flooded with fear, doubt, and misleading content, it becomes much harder for:

• Farmers to make informed decisions.
• Policymakers to introduce fair, science-based rules.
• Everyday people to understand what’s actually happening to our food and planet.

When a company as large as Meta steps away from fact-checking, the burden of truth falls on all of us, journalists, researchers, educators, and communities.

What We Can Do

Now that Meta has removed its professional fact-checking system, it’s more important than ever to:

• Stay alert to false or misleading posts, especially on Facebook and Instagram.
• Support independent news and research that explain climate and food issues clearly.
• Share accurate, evidence-based information with your own networks, it still makes a difference.

At University of Guelph, Canada, we’re tracking how climate and food misinformation is evolving in this new environment. We’ll keep sharing tools, updates, and verified facts, because truth still matters.

The post Meta Ended Fact-Checking. What That Means for Climate and Food Misinformation appeared first on Misinforesearch.

One of our team members, Dr. Mahatab Uddin, participated in the event as a Lead Author of Working Group III of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report (AR7). He joined more than six hundred experts appointed to the three Working Groups of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), who gathered in Paris last week to begin work on the first draft of AR7. This was the first time in the IPCC’s history that the three Working Groups held a joint Lead Author Meeting.

At the invitation of the French government—through the Ministry of Ecological Transition, Biodiversity, and International Negotiations on Climate and Nature, the Ministry of Education and Research, and the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs—the IPCC’s joint Lead Author Meeting of the three Working Groups took place from 1 to 5 December. The authors, representing more than 100 countries, focused on the initial drafts of the three Working Group contributions to AR7 and on cross-cutting themes. Bringing together authors from all three Working Groups in one venue was intended to support an ambitious qualitative advance in the assessment of key interdisciplinary issues related to climate change.

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Full article

This is another out of a series of upcoming publications from our agri-food, climate and rural misinformation research platform. https://lnkd.in/gqKESpDJ
We took a deep dive into the issue, after what we initially identified in this article (https://lnkd.in/gYymMJQE)
Listen to the podcast for insights into this study

Watch the video for full insights

The study emphasizes the urgency and significance of the agri-food misinformation topic, particularly as we transition to Artificial Intelligence for agri-food development and augmented advice, while already observed polarization in creating a shared reality of equitable global agri-food development.

Certainly reiterate the thought (https://lnkd.in/gjnMWw9z) shared by ACER Consulting Ltd. and Hanne Goetz, and our earlier studies (https://lnkd.in/grbXfeK3) highlighting increasing confounded advice in the Canadian agri-food advisory service

Summary:
Misinformation impact on Sri Lanka’s digital agri‐food advisory services
Q‐methodology revealed three distinct stakeholder perspectives
Misinformation threatens food security, farmer livelihoods, and sector resilience
Promoting digital literacy, moderation, and collaboration among stakeholders is urgently needed.

Stay tuned for more insights from studies by Khondokar Kabir, Nasir Abbas Khan Sultana Yeasmin, Hadis Azizi Edward Asafo-Agyei

The post How does misinformation influence the digital agri-food advisory service? Multi-stakeholder Perspectives from Sri Lanka appeared first on Misinforesearch.

Climate change is not a distant threat in the Global South; it is a lived reality. Rising temperatures, unpredictable rainfall, and more frequent extreme weather events are already affecting the ability of farmers to grow food, earn livelihoods, and support their communities. In response, governments, researchers, and development organizations have promoted a range of adaptation strategies to build resilience. But many of these efforts are quietly being undermined by a less visible force: misinformation.

From widely circulated myths about genetically modified crops to rumors that climate change is a foreign hoax, misinformation is eroding trust in science and slowing down adaptation where it is needed most. Its impact on food security is significant and growing.

When Uncertainty Affects Climate Action

Adaptation strategies often rely on access to accurate, timely information. Whether it’s deciding which drought-resistant crop variety to plant or how to adjust planting schedules in response to changing weather patterns, farmers need to trust the information they receive. But in many regions of the Global South, false claims spread faster and further than verified knowledge.

Mobile phones and social media have become powerful tools in rural communities, but they also allow misinformation to spread quickly. Inaccurate weather forecasts, conspiracy theories about new seed varieties, and misleading videos on agricultural practices can cause confusion and hesitation. In some cases, farmers abandon promising innovations altogether after encountering false claims online or through word of mouth.

This hesitation is not irrational. Many communities have experienced a long history of broken promises, external interventions, and one-size-fits-all solutions that did not work in practice. Misinformation exploits these experiences and widens the gap between scientific knowledge and local realities.

Food Security Under Risk

The link between climate adaptation and food security is direct. When farmers cannot rely on the information they receive, they are more likely to take fewer risks or continue with outdated practices. As climate patterns shift and pests and diseases evolve, the costs of inaction or misinformed decisions grow. Yields drop. Recovery after climate shocks becomes more difficult. Entire food systems become more fragile.

This is especially true for smallholder farmers, who form the backbone of food production in many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Without clear guidance they trust, and without the tools to verify what they see or hear online, their ability to respond to a changing climate is weakened.

Building Information Resilience

Addressing misinformation is not simply about correcting false claims. It requires building trust in public institutions, research bodies, and knowledge-sharing systems. It also means making space for local knowledge and experience and creating two-way communication channels where farmers are not just passive recipients of information, but active participants in shaping it.

Community radio, farmer cooperatives, local extension services, and trusted civil society organizations continue to play an important role. But these efforts must be supported and scaled. Training in digital literacy, especially among youth and women in rural areas, is also crucial. These groups are often the most affected by climate risks, yet the least equipped to filter misleading content.

At the same time, governments and international organizations must work with media platforms to ensure that climate and agricultural information in local languages is prioritized and verified.

A Shared Responsibility

Research institutions like the University of Guelph have a critical role to play. Beyond developing technologies and policy recommendations, universities must engage with the realities of how information is accessed, interpreted, and trusted in diverse contexts. Collaboration with researchers, practitioners, and communities in the Global South is essential for developing communication strategies that are context-specific, inclusive, and responsive.

Climate adaptation is not only a technical challenge, but also a communication challenge. Without a strong foundation of accurate, trusted information, adaptation strategies will remain out of reach for many.

Conclusion

The Global South is adapting to climate change under extremely difficult conditions. Misinformation adds another layer of complexity, weakening already fragile systems and undermining trust in solutions. Confronting this challenge requires more than fact-checking. It calls for rethinking how knowledge is shared, who is included in the conversation, and how we support communities in making informed decisions about their future.

Food security depends not only on what we grow and how we grow it, but also on what we believe to be true.

The post Misinformed and Underprepared: How Misinformation Undermines Climate Adaptation and Food Security in the Global South appeared first on Misinforesearch.

I was in Vila Real, Portugal, attending the 27th European Seminar on Extension & Education (ESEE), held on the beautiful UTAD campus. This year’s theme focused on inclusivity and transformation in agricultural extension education, and I had the opportunity to present on the emerging LLM applications in agriculture, as well as the opportunities and challenges for agricultural extension and advisory. My presentation drew attention to the social dimensions often overlooked in the excitement of technological innovation. It also explored what the rising use of LLMs might mean to us in terms of trust, capacity development, inclusion, and the evolving role of extension and advisory services.  It sparked some good conversations, and I was happy to share my thoughts.

I met others with similar interests in GenAI and agriculture, ranging from governance structures and policy frameworks to farmer-centered design and theoretical viewpoints. The diverse perspectives reminded me of just how complex this research area is, and how important it is to stay open, grounded, and critical. Another highlight was reconnecting with familiar faces from previous conferences. Whether forming new connections or rekindling old ones, conversations often evolved into discussions on ongoing projects, sparking opportunities for future collaborations. Such precious moments were spontaneous but truly unforgettable.

The plenary sessions offered an opportunity to engage more broadly with two key themes. One focused on the linkages between policy, research, and practice within AKIS (Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems). The second plenary was on digitization and AI in extension education. Speakers explored both the potential and the uncertainties surrounding emerging technologies such as AI. As I listened to their reflections, I was reminded that while AI holds enormous potential, its success will ultimately depend on the choices we make, how we harness its benefits, mitigate its risks, protect livelihoods, promote equity, and confront the growing challenge of agri-food misinformation. Coming from the Global South, issues such as digital access, representation, and capacity are often overlooked yet essential for building sustainable digital futures.

I also participated in a hands-on demonstration of the PREMIERE project, where I contributed feedback on a prototype toolbox developed to support multi-actor collaboration in the EU.

The field trip took us far beyond the walls of the conference into the historic landscapes of the Douro Valley, where we visited the Quinta das Carvalhas winery. Standing under the mid-morning sun, we listened to various strategies and vineyard practices adopted to protect soil health, preserve biodiversity, and manage the steep-slope vineyards amid climate extremes. It wasn’t just about the wine, though; for the record, it tasted incredibly good. What stood out was the passion and resilience reflected in the deeply rooted connections with the land.

I spent my final day visiting local shops, enjoying a quiet meal, and reflecting on the week. I’m deeply grateful to the Braithewaite Scholarship for making this experience possible. I left Portugal with a renewed sense of why my work matters, and the timing couldn’t be any better, as I take my next steps forward.

By Uduak Ita Edet

PhD Candidate, Rural Studies. University of Guelph

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