Jakku, Emma (author), Taylor, Bruce (author), Fleming, Aysha (author), Mason, Claire (author), Fielke, Simon (author), Sounness, Chris (author), and Thorburn, Peter (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2019-12
Published:
Netherlands: Elsevier
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 203 Document Number: D12272
13 pages, Advances in Smart Farming and Big Data applications have the potential to help agricultural industries meet productivity and sustainability challenges. However, these benefits are unlikely to be realised if the social implications of these technological innovations are not adequately considered by those who promote them. Big Data applications are intrinsically socio-technical; their development and deployment are a product of social interactions between people, institutional and regulatory settings, as well as the technology itself. This paper explores the socio-technical factors and conditions that influence the development of Smart Farming and Big Data applications, using a multi-level perspective on transitions combined with social practice theory. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 Australian grain farmers and industry stakeholders to elicit their perspectives on benefits and risks of these changes. The analysis shows that issues related to trust are central concerns for many participants. These include procedural concerns about transparency and distributional concerns about who will benefit from access to and use of "farmers' data". These concerns create scepticism about the value of `smart' technologies amongst some industry stakeholders, especially farmers. It also points to a divergence of expectations and norms between actors and institutions at the regime and niche levels in the emerging transition towards Smart Farming. Bridging this divide will require niche level interventions to enhance the agency of farmers and their local networks in these transactions, and, the cooperative design of new institutions at regime level to facilitate the fair and transparent allocation of risk and benefit in farming data information chains.
4 pages, via Online journal, Since late Mar. 2020, many universities halted normal operations due to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Although extension uses many different techniques to educate consumers, it has been slow to grasp the power of social media. Faced with a dilemma of using digital methods instead of in-person field days, short courses, and workshops, Twitter was a viable alternative, especially for broad audience engagement. Tweet threads were posted on Twitter every Monday morning from 6 Apr. to 8 June 2020. Each thread consisted of 10 tweets. A hashtag #YardFruits was used to start the thread and for later reference. For the first nine threads only one fruit species was discussed per thread. The final thread consisted of single tweets of several species. Engagement percentage did not differ over time but did differ among the crop species. Tweets that did not include a photo received less engagement (2.7%) than those that did include a photo (4.7%). My Twitter account saw a 6.5% increase in followers during the series. Grape (Vitis sp.), passion fruit (Passiflora sp.), fig (Ficus carica), and pear (Pyrus communis) threads had the least engagement and were different from the Other Fruits thread. All other threads were similar. Extension educators can grow their influence by using well-targeted, focused tweets and tweet threads, especially those that use hashtags and photos.
3 pages., Online from publisher website., Following a training course in technology stewardship, actors in the Caribbean's agri-food sector are implementing ICT approaches to provide agricultural advice and support to their local communities
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.
12 pages., Digitalization is a key enabler of sustainable development of cities’ socio-economic dynamics with the potential to foster climate-friendly urban environments and societies. The advent of the 4th industrial revolution has seen the increased application of digitalization in several fields and at different levels. High-tech digital devices, platforms and environments are increasingly being deployed to enhance productivity, efficiency and sustainability, and improve overall well-being of urban dwellers. Digitalization is projected to further impact cities in future, transform jobs and trigger life-style changes with far-reaching impacts that will ultimately affect cities’ resilience and adaptation capacities. While a growing body of research has highlighted the significance of digitalization to climate change mitigation such as reducing GHG and CO2 emissions, comprehensive evaluations of the potentials of digitalization as an enabler of climate change adaptation remain scarce. This paper addresses this gap by analysing the current trend in digital revolution in relation to climate change adaptation and examines the likely challenges of digitalization. A desk research method was adopted, focusing on core digitalization concepts driving the Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0). Nine case studies in cities across various continents were selected to assess the potentials of digitalization in addressing climatic hazards and to highlight benefits from implementing digitalization, while considering the social-ecological-technological challenges and tensions around IR 4.0. Our findings reveal the capabilities of digitalization in supporting more effective early warning and emergency response systems, enhancing food and water security, improving power infrastructure performance, enabling citizen engagement and participatory adaptation measures and minimizing the impacts of climatic hazards. Finally, we recommend feasible pathways to overcome present risks and challenges in order to optimize the numerous opportunities offered by digitalization in support of climate change adaptation initiatives.
11 pages., Via online article, A “digital revolution” in agriculture is underway. Advanced technologies like sensors, artificial intelligence, and robotics are increasingly being promoted as a means to increase food production efficiency while minimizing resource use. In the process, agricultural digitalization raises critical social questions about the implications for diverse agricultural labourers and rural spaces as digitalization evolves. In this paper, we use literature and field data to outline some key trends being observed at the nexus of agricultural production, technology, and labour in North America, with a particular focus on the Canadian context. Using the data, we highlight three key tensions observed: rising land costs and automation; the development of a high-skill/low-skilled bifurcated labour market; and issues around the control of digital data. With these tensions in mind, we use a social justice lens to consider the potential implications of digital agricultural technologies for farm labour and rural communities, which directs our attention to racial exploitation in agricultural labour specifically. In exploring these tensions, we argue that policy and research must further examine how to shift the trajectory of digitalization in ways that support food production as well as marginalized agricultural labourers, while pointing to key areas for future research—which is lacking to date. We emphasize that the current enthusiasm for digital agriculture should not blind us to the specific ways that new technologies intensify exploitation and deepen both labour and spatial marginalization.
3 pages, Big data represent a new productive factor (the "new oil" for advocates) that generates new realities in agriculture. By adding an extra "cyber" dimension to current farming systems, big data lead to the emergence of new, complex cyber-physical-social systems. However, our understanding of the sustainability of such systems is still at a rudimental stage. In this critical review we attempt to shed some light on this topic, by identifying and presenting some issues that put in doubt the sustainability of big data agriculture. By using a punctuated equilibria lens, we argue that despite their contribution to the economic and environmental performance of farming, big data act as a speciation mechanism. Hence, they lead to new forms of intraspecific, interspecific and intergeneric competition, thus putting at risk the most vulnerable players of the game. We conclude by pointing out that to holistically address the interrelation between big data and agricultural sustainability we need a hybrid research line, which will combine the qualities of both technology-oriented research and critical social science.
International: Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation, ACP-EU, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 153 Document Number: D11614
Notes:
3 pages., Online from publisher., Author addresses "large gap between African extension services ... and the number of farmers being reached." ... "Africa's existing mobile network (currently the second biggest mobile market in the world) could be better utilised to bridge this gap and provide mobile-based agricultural information, advice and support to smallholder farmers."
Online from publication via subscription., A new report focuses on internet infrastructures on tribal lands and how tribes can use it to strengthen their sovereignty.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 201 Document Number: D11709
Notes:
4 pages., Online from publisher., "Most agribusinesses prioritize direct-buy as their primary method of website advertising. However, with increasingly advanced AdTech available in the market, relying on one channel can limit your potential for advertising and marketing success. One of the advertising channels that has grown in popularity over the past few years has been data-targeted programmatic advertising (i.e., "the process of automating the buying and selling of ad inventory in real time through an automated bidding system. ... Instead of focusing on the placement of the ad, your advertising is demographically delivered to the target audience.")
