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.
Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
2004
Published:
India
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 185 Document Number: D00372
Notes:
Via online. 4 pages., Describes a project, involving a software known as Bhoomi, by Karnataka State Government and the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, to computerize land records and make updated information available online to farmers in sync with the time.
Hall, Kelsey (author), Meyers, Courtney (author), and Vaught, Laura (author)
Format:
Paper
Publication Date:
2011-02
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 188 Document Number: D01498
Notes:
Paper presented in the Agricultural Communications Section of the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists annual meeting, Corpus Christi, Texas, February 6-7, 2011. 22 pages.
Adinarayana, J. (author), Sudharsan, D. (author), Tripathy, A.K. (author), and IEEE, New York City, New York.
Format:
Paper
Publication Date:
2009-02-07
Published:
India
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 181 Document Number: C36580
Notes:
Pages 54-59 of proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Advanced Geographic Information Systems and Web Services, Cancun, Mexico, February 1-7, 2009.
Juma, Dominic (author) and Kahinga, Esther (author)
Format:
Paper
Publication Date:
2006-05-21
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 151 Document Number: C24475
Notes:
Retrieved July 5, 2006, Conference sponsored by the International Association for Agricultural Information Specialists (IAALD) in Nairobi, Kenya, May 21-26, 2006. Via Livelihoods Connect. 9 pages., Conference theme: "Managing agricultural information for sustainable food security and improved livelihoods in Africa."
16 pages, via online journal article, This study examined the online content of interdisciplinary agricultural center webpages. Content modification dates, mission statements, and content were determined through a content analysis. Many of the websites did not mention a modification date for the content, while many websites had outdated content mostly older than six months. More than two-thirds of the websites provided PDFs that visitor could download to learn more about topics, by many of the websites lacked any media element that was being coded. Additionally, many websites did not use multiple forms of media. More than half of the websites were coded as lacking any social media content or plugins, but out of the websites that did include social media content, Facebook was the most prevalent. The commonalities between the center’s mission displayed on the website and the content theme were analyzed and chi-square tests provided the degree of association. A significant association existed and an alignment between communication strategies and missions of the centers was concluded, which is important when organizations communicate about agricultural science as indicated by previous literature. It is recommended that centers communicate via their websites in a timely manner and allow modification times to be seen to viewers to show their information is up-to-date. Website media content should also be diversified and communicators of these centers should explore the unique communication opportunities provided by social media. Future research should explore the target audience of interdisciplinary agricultural centers and should analyze the messages centers are using to communicate with those audiences.
