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.
15 pages, In spite of several strategies implemented to improve sorghum production in Ghana, average grain yield in farmers’ fields remains low and far below the estimated potential. The development of effective strategies requires continuous, in-depth understanding of production constraints as well as farmer preferences for crop traits. To this end, a participatory rural appraisal using focus group discussions, interviews with semi-structured questionnaires and preference ranking was carried out among 122 smallholder sorghum farmers in the Upper East Region of Ghana. Majority (91%) of respondents were engaged in farming with more than half of their farm sizes allocated to sorghum cultivation. Drought, high cost of farm inputs and declining soil fertility were the top three constraints. Almost 42% of farmers described their soils as low in fertility. The most preferred traits by farmers were drought tolerance, high grain yield, earliness, grain quality as well as low fertilizer requirement. A better understanding of the perceptions of farmers and factors that limit the adoption of improved technology is important to guide policy towards the design of effective crop improvement and extension programmes. The study highlights the importance of breeding sorghum varieties with traits preferred by smallholder farmers that will lead to increased adoption of improved technology.
