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.
Alumbaugh, Joann (author), Schimek, Rosemary (author), Cooper, Hyler (author), Brandt, Erika (author), Rieker, Jana (author), Herman, Matthew (author), Durs, Don (author), Winter, Kristen (author), Melnyk, Darwin (author), and Rattliff, Robert (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2009
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: C28778
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.
Coherence in Information for Agricultural Research for Development (CIARD).
Format:
Report
Publication Date:
2009-10
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 182 Document Number: C37003
Notes:
Group 3: Making content widely accessible on the Web. 3 pages., Resource from CIARD for agricultural managers, researchers, information professionals and technical developers.
