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.
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) (author)
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
2017
Published:
Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 8 Document Number: D10296
Notes:
57 pages., Report from FAO, Via website., This report responds to the request by the G20 Agricultural Ministers to FAO, IFPRI and OECD in
June 2016 to build on their preliminary assessment of existing ICT applications and platforms and
make specific proposals for consideration and action by G20 Agriculture Deputies ahead of the next
G20 Agricultural Ministers meeting on the best possible mechanism to improve agricultural ICT
exchange and cooperation. The report is organized as follows: (i) The section Summary, Evaluation and Recommendations is targeted to policy makers and draws from the detailed review undertaken in Sections 1 to 4 of the report. It provides a succinct but comprehensive account of ICTs in agriculture, including evaluating their impact. It identifies gaps, and puts forward a number of recommendations for the G20 in line with the G20 comparative advantage for collective action. Policies and measures to promote ICTs are crucial for the G20 economies and for agriculture in particular. G20 Ministers of Agriculture can take action to integrate ICTs in agricultural policies and initiatives. The report makes a number of recommendations for concrete actions in the area of ICTs that promote sustainable food systems and contribute to the realization of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.(ii) Sections 1 to 4 contain a detailed, albeit not exhaustive review of ICTs in agriculture. There is plethora of ICT applications on agriculture, ranging from using radio to satellite remote sensing, and in Section 2 every effort has been made to provide a comprehensive picture through the discussion of selected applications. Section 3 reviews the platforms and initiatives that promote the use of ICTs, and Section 4 examines governance issues specifically related to principles, rights and privacy. A number of Annexes provide more detail to the reader on a number of areas related to
governance.
8 pages., Via online journal, This paper examines the effect of farmers' access to communication technologies (CTs) on farmers' agricultural output at the aggregate level in the People's Republic of China (P.R. China) based on panel data. The paper uses a dynamic Cobb–Douglas aggregate production function and the generalized method of moments (GMM) as estimation techniques to estimate the parameters of interests. The research findings are: the estimated effects (measured by elasticity) of teledensity on the provincial level agricultural output have been positive and statistically significant both in the short and long runs. In the long-run, the size of the effect is substantial: from 0.94 to 1.06. This implies that the agriculture sector of the P. R. China has some potentials to derive benefit from the use of CTs like telephone. Hence, the Chinese government should consider policy support to expand communication infrastructure for the farmers
23 pages., Via online journal., This study draws on a culturally centered collaboration with a community of dalit women farmers in South India who were organized in a cooperative in their collective resistance against the corporatization of agriculture. Situated in the backdrop of the epidemic of farmer suicides in the region, this manuscript examines how those at the margins of global neoliberal transformations symbolically and materially make sense of and resist these transformations. The voices of the women farmers disrupt the underlying neoliberal assumptions that undergird the importation of cash crop agriculture into a subsistence and community-centered farming culture. They depict the ways in which Western cash crop agriculture disrupts community, food security, local health care systems, and the unique gender relations. Moreover, the communication advocacy work carried out by the women seeks to transform agricultural policy through material interventions as alternative practices of agriculture that challenge the hegemony of cash-based individualized agriculture.
