Ong'ayo, Milcah (author), Njoroge, Janet (author), and Critchley, Will (author)
Format:
Book chapter
Publication Date:
2001
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Document Number: D01201
Notes:
Pages 110-121 in Chris Reij and Ann Waters-Bayer (eds.), Farmer innovation in Africa: a source of inspiration for agricultural development. Earthscan Publications, Ltd., London, England. 362 pages.
8pgs, This paper presents a critical examination of smart farming. I follow other critical analyses in recognizing the centrality of innovation processes in generating smart farming products, services, arrangements, and problematic outcomes. I subsequently use insights from critical human geography scholarship on the significance of understanding topological transformations to move beyond interpretations that identify only a narrow range of smart farming problems, such as a lack of coordination or limited uptake by farmers. Instead, I examine a broader set of challenges produced by smart farming developments. The overriding concern, I argue, is that smart farming unfolds via the production of numerous ‘misconfigured innovations.’ Using insights from literature on responsible research and innovation I then probe the stakes of looking beyond the misconfigured innovations of smart farming and discuss how new technologies might come to play a role in producing emancipatory smart farming. I pay attention to research on the ‘internet of people,’ which paints a stark new picture of social life generally, and in particular how rural life might be computed and calculated according to new conceptualizations of sociality and spatiality.
