Acting like an algorithm: digital farming platforms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in

AbstractThis 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 i nhabited 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 p aper 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 schola rship. To speak of a data valuechain 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 platfor...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - Category: Food Science Source Type: research