Inserting machines, displacing people: how automation imaginaries for agriculture promise ‘liberation’ from the industrialized farm
AbstractAn emerging discourse about automated agricultural machinery imagines farms as places where farmers and workers do notneed to be, but also implicitly frames farms as intolerable places where people do notwant to be. Only autonomous machines, this story goes, can relieve farmers and workers of this presumed burden by letting them ‘farm at a distance’. In return for this distanced autonomy, farmers are promised increased control over their work-life balance and greater farm productivity from letting ‘smart’ robots assume control over the operational environment. Drawing upon the ways that these machines are p...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 18, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Agroecology as a Philosophy of Life
AbstractUse of the term “agroecology” has greatly increased over the past few decades, with scholars, civil society actors, and intergovernmental organizations identifying agroecology as a promising pathway for realizing more just and sustainable food systems. Using a community-engaged approach, we explore how diverse agroecological actors in southern Brazil describe and define agroecology. We find that across a range of social differences, agroecological actors come together in describing agroecology as a philosophy of life that promotes well-being, positioning agroecology as a counter-narrative to global discou rses ...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 14, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Paul B. Thompson and Patricia E. Norris: sustainability –what everyone needs to know
(Source: Agriculture and Human Values)
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 14, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Agroecology as a Philosophy of Life
AbstractUse of the term “agroecology” has greatly increased over the past few decades, with scholars, civil society actors, and intergovernmental organizations identifying agroecology as a promising pathway for realizing more just and sustainable food systems. Using a community-engaged approach, we explore how diverse agroecological actors in southern Brazil describe and define agroecology. We find that across a range of social differences, agroecological actors come together in describing agroecology as a philosophy of life that promotes well-being, positioning agroecology as a counter-narrative to global discou rses ...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 14, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Paul B. Thompson and Patricia E. Norris: sustainability –what everyone needs to know
(Source: Agriculture and Human Values)
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 14, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Committing to change? A case study on volunteer engagement at a New Zealand urban farm
AbstractUrban agriculture is a promising avenue for food system change; however, projects often struggle with a lack of volunteers —limiting both their immediate goals and the broader movement-building to which many alternative food initiatives (AFIs) aspire. In this paper, I adopt a case study approach focusing on Farm X, an urban farm with a strong volunteer culture located in Tāmaki-Makaurau Auckland, New Zealand’s larg est city. Drawing on a significant period of researcher participation and 11 in-depth interviews with volunteers and project coordinators, I first contextualise and explore the history of Farm X, th...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 13, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Are fencelines sites of engagement or avoidance in farmer adoption of alternative practices?
AbstractUnderstanding what factors can positively or negatively affect farmers ’ decisions to adopt new practices is of particular importance to agricultural researchers and practitioners. Few studies in adoption research have examined the role that fenceline neighbours can play in influencing the decisions of their neighbours to adopt new practices, especially in North Amer ica. Prior research on adoption suggests that there are spatial effects that exist in adoption decisions, such as the uptake of new farming practices. For example, previous qualitative research with farmers has suggested that fenceline neighbours are...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 12, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Measuring the end of hunger: Knowledge politics in the selection of SDG food security indicators
This article chronicles and analyses the indicator selection process for SDG 2.1, focusing in particular on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) indicator. Despite alleged efforts to separate political and technical aspects in the indicator selection process we find that they were entangled from the start. While there was significant contestation around which indicators should be selected, the process was characterized by pathway lock-in: The complexity of food security quantification and the resource constraints in the process favored already established data infrastructures and milieus of expertise, locking in the...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 12, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Are fencelines sites of engagement or avoidance in farmer adoption of alternative practices?
AbstractUnderstanding what factors can positively or negatively affect farmers ’ decisions to adopt new practices is of particular importance to agricultural researchers and practitioners. Few studies in adoption research have examined the role that fenceline neighbours can play in influencing the decisions of their neighbours to adopt new practices, especially in North Amer ica. Prior research on adoption suggests that there are spatial effects that exist in adoption decisions, such as the uptake of new farming practices. For example, previous qualitative research with farmers has suggested that fenceline neighbours are...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 12, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Measuring the end of hunger: Knowledge politics in the selection of SDG food security indicators
This article chronicles and analyses the indicator selection process for SDG 2.1, focusing in particular on the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) indicator. Despite alleged efforts to separate political and technical aspects in the indicator selection process we find that they were entangled from the start. While there was significant contestation around which indicators should be selected, the process was characterized by pathway lock-in: The complexity of food security quantification and the resource constraints in the process favored already established data infrastructures and milieus of expertise, locking in the...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 12, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
Between ambitions and actions: how citizens navigate the entrepreneurial process of co-producing sustainable urban food futures
In this study, we assume the development of urban agriculture in Oosterwold is an entrepreneurial process, i.e. a creative (re)organization that is ongoing and intervenes in daily life. To understand how this entrepreneurial process helps to realize sustainable food futures, this paper explores what futures for urban agriculture residents of Oosterwold prefer and deem possible and how these futures are organized in the present. We use futuring to explore possible and preferable images of the future, and to backcast those images to the present day. Our findings show residents have different perspectives of the future. Furth...
Source: Agriculture and Human Values - April 11, 2023 Category: Food Science Source Type: research
