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.
Via UI Library subscription., Owner-president of Brock Associates, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, describes his career, the services his firm provides, outlook for agricultural commodities, and farm policy changes anticipated with the new federal administration.
7 pages, This study aims to identify whether there is dependence between agricultural commodities traded on the Brazilian market. We used the bivariate copula method over a ten-year period to assess the extreme effects on the returns of the following commodities: soybean, wheat, Arabica coffee, and Robusta coffee. The relationship directly affects the dependence between Arabica and Robusta coffees commodities. While the relationship between wheat, Arabica and Robusta coffees, and soybean is positively dependent. Economic growth, market dynamics, and the prices of an agricultural commodity tend to increase the price of other commodities.
17 pages, Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America’s most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers’ markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America’s Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 82 Document Number: D10831
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10 pages., via website AgWeb's Farm Journal, In their story, “Plowed Under, The Next American Farm Bust Is Upon Us,” (paywall) the Wall Street Journal reported on the tough times we’re facing in agriculture. They are tough. And, as a corn and soybean farmer, it’s painful to see. But farmers are nothing if not resilient. And we’ll survive this one too.
2 pages, via Online source, Purchasing organic food in today’s world likely means taking a trip to Whole Foods, owned by one of the richest men in all of history, Jeff Bezos. Although it is hard to imagine organic foods as something other than a luxury item targeted towards affluent demographics, the origin story of the organic foods market is vastly different. Written by Winona State University associate professor of sociology Craig B. Upright, Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota dives back into the 1970s to paint a vivid image of the subversive world of organic groceries and food co-ops before the era of Whole Foods.
