13 pages, via Online Journal, This paper contributes to our understanding of farm data value chains with assistance from 54 semi-structured interviews and field notes from participant observations. Methodologically, it includes individuals, such as farmers, who hold well-known positionalities within digital agriculture spaces—platforms that include precision farming techniques, farm equipment built on machine learning architecture and algorithms, and robotics—while also including less visible elements and practices. The actors interviewed and materialities and performances observed thus came from spaces and places inhabited by, for example, farmers, crop scientists, statisticians, programmers, and senior leadership in firms located in the U.S. and Canada. The stability of “the” artifacts followed for this project proved challenging, which led to me rethinking how to approach the subject conceptually. The paper is animated by a posthumanist commitment, drawing heavily from assemblage thinking and critical data scholarship coming out of Science and Technology Studies. The argument’s understanding of “chains” therefore lies on an alternative conceptual plane relative to most commodity chain scholarship. To speak of a data value chain is to foreground an orchestrating set of relations among humans, non-humans, products, spaces, places, and practices. The paper’s principle contribution involves interrogating lock-in tendencies at different “points” along the digital farm platform assemblage while pushing for a varied understanding of governance depending on the roles of the actors and actants involved.
O'Gorman, Melanie (author / University of Toronto) and Centre for the Study of African Economics, Oxford, UK
Format:
Conference paper
Publication Date:
2006-07-20
Published:
United Kingdom
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C28215
Notes:
Posted online at http://www.csae.ox.ac.uk/conferences/2007-EDiA-LaWBiDC/papers/295-OGorman.pdf, Presented at the "Economic development in Africa" conference from March 18-20, 2007 at Oxford University.
Subair, Stephen K. (author / University of Botswana Library)
Format:
Proceedings
Publication Date:
2001-04-04
Published:
Africa: Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 138 Document Number: C20943
Notes:
Burton Swanson Collection, pages 357-363, from "Emerging trends in agricultural and extension education", AIAEE 2001, Proceedings of the 17th Annual Conference, April 4-7, 2001, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
