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Recent years have seen increased investment in data-driven farming through the use of sensors (hardware), algorithms (software), and networking technologies to guide decision making. By analyzing the discourse of 34 startup company websites, we identify four future visions promoted by data-driven farming startups: the vigilant farmer who controls all aspects of her farm through data; the efficient farmer who has optimized his farm operations to be profitable and sustainable; the enlightened farmer who achieves harmony with nature via data-driven insights; and the empowered farmer who asserts ownership of her farm's data, and uses it to benefit herself and her fellow farmers. We describe each of these visions and how startups propose to achieve them. We then consider some consequences of these visions; in particular, how they might affect power relations between the farmer and other stakeholders in agriculture--farm workers, nonhumans, and the technology providers themselves.
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Surveillance agriculture and peasant autonomy
Abstract ‘Big Data’ digital technologies are beginning to make inroads into peasant agriculture in the Global South. Of particular importance is the subset of technologies that appropriate agricultural decision‐making, here theorized as surveillance agriculture. These technological regimes aspire to not only remove decision‐making from the farmer, but eventually to replace the farmer with, for instance, ‘autonomous’ tractors. This paper looks ahead to ask what a technological trajectory that aspires to autonomy for the tractor may portend for autonomy for the peasant farmer. It compares surveillance agriculture to other forms of surveillance capitalism, noting that it shares a will to not only sell products and services but to manipulate behaviour but differs in that the behaviour being manipulated is professional productive behaviour. The paper surveys the vested interests of the entities behind surveillance agriculture and asks how informational relations of production may be changed between farmers and these entities. It then examines the informational relations of production among peasant farmers that may be interdicted by surveillance agriculture, especially the group‐level decision‐making dynamics that make ‘individual autonomy’ a misnomer. But surveillance agriculture is resolutely individualized, which raises concerns for peasant decision‐making autonomy.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2310483
- PAR ID:
- 10516880
- Publisher / Repository:
- Journal of Agrarian Change
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Agrarian Change
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1471-0358
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 608 to 631
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12470
