Automating Agroecology: How to Design a Farming Robot Without a Monocultural Mindset?

Abstract

Robots are widely expected—and pushed—to transform open-field agriculture, but these visions remain wedded to optimizing monocultural farming systems. Meanwhile there is little pull for automation from ecology-based, diversified farming realms. Noting this gap, we here explore the potential for robots to foster an agroecological approach to crop production. The research was situated in The Netherlands within the case of pixel cropping, a nascent farming method in which multiple food and service crops are planted together in diverse assemblages employing agroecological practices such as intercropping and biological pest control. Around this case we engaged with a variety of specialists in discussion groups, workshops, and design challenges to explore the potential of field robots to meet the multifaceted demands of highly diverse agroecological cropping systems. This generated a spectrum of imaginations for how automated tools might—or might not—be appropriately used, ranging from fully automated visions, to collaborative scenarios, to fully analogue prototypes. We found that automating agroecological cropping systems requires finding ways to imbue the ethos of agroecology into designed tools, thereby seeking to overcome tensions between production aims and other forms of social and ecological care. We conclude that a rethinking of automation is necessary for agroecological contexts: not as a blueprint for replacing humans, but making room for analogue and hybrid forms of agricultural work. These findings highlight a need for design processes which include a diversity of actors, involve iterative design cycles, and incorporate feedback between designers, practitioners, tools, and cropping systems.

Adoption of Food Species Mixtures from Farmers’ Perspectives in Germany: Managing Complexity and Harnessing Advantages

“…Including conventional farmers' perspectives could be highly relevant to mainstream agroecological approaches beyond organic farming [23]. This would require another social science approach than expert interviews, e.g., agroecological design studies [24]. Future qualitative studies on food SM could include farmers from more European countries and actors in the food value chain.…”

Responsible robotics design–A systems approach to developing design guides for robotics in pasture-grazed dairy farming

“…In practice, effective development of holistic design guides must be underpinned by co-design processes that involve the end-users as well as other relevant stakeholders such as advisors and consumers. Work by authors such as Ditzler and Driessen (2022) and Romera et al (2020) have highlighted such processes in approaching system redesign and technology integration with complex farming systems. The design guide we have proposed could form the basis of discussions with end-users (farmers and employees) and technology designers and manufacturers, with the goal of iterating and custom fitting the design characteristics.…”

“…Undertaking agricultural research and innovation based on a "ground-up" understanding of on-farm needs and challenges underpins many participatory approaches. The concept of design thinking is increasingly popular as a participatory approach in agriculture, to include end-users (farmers and stakeholders) by first understanding the "problem" and to understand the underlying context for successful innovation (Prost, 2021;Ditzler and Driessen, 2022;Eastwood et al, 2022). We propose a design guide, built on recent literature on robotics and automation in agriculture (see below), to facilitate this contextualization phase.…”

“…The interaction between robots and work have been explored in several studies (Legun and Burch, 2021;Nazareno and Schiff, 2021;Rose et al, 2021a). Additionally, Ditzler and Driessen (2022) state that while robotics is envisaged to "transform open-field agriculture", a rethinking is required to broaden the robotic future imaginations to include more diverse farm systems and to incorporate aspects of sustainability. Finally, studies by Legun and Burch (2021) and Klerkx et al (2019) identify the need to carefully examine the transitions to a robotic future, to be sensitive to the wider context (socio-economic, cultural and political), and to acknowledge that robotics represents just one possible transition pathway for future agricultural systems.…”

“…In this perspective paper, we consider the concepts of responsible innovation, systems thinking, and co-design to propose a design guide for development of robotics in pasture-grazed dairy farming. The paper builds on recent work interconnecting these domains by McCampbell et al (2021), Eastwood et al (2021), Rose et al (2021a), Ryan et al (2021), and Ditzler and Driessen (2022). Here, we address two questions related to the future use of robotics and automation systems in pasture-grazed dairy systems: 1) What are the key design criteria for development of robotics on pasture-grazed dairy systems to enable successful and responsible innovation?…”