Drawing lines in the cornfield: an analysis of discourse and identity relations across agri-food networks

Rotz, Sarah

doi:10.1007/s10460-017-9838-0

Cited by 10 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In many cases, farmers are sceptical of the benefits and weary of investing in an expensive set of technologies of questionable value. Within nearly all agro‐food sectors, farmers have effectively no control over the prices they receive for their crops, which has made the affordability of these technologies a major concern (Schewe and Stuart ; Rotz ). On the issue of exclusion, the growing gap between the technological ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ may only exacerbate the longstanding progression of economic polarisation between small‐ and large‐scale farmers, which has already led to rapid declines in medium‐sized farms (Kirschenmann et al ).…”

Section: Digital Agriculture: What Is It?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As well, real and perceived applicability is a significant barrier to technological adoption, which, together, are exacerbating inequities for smaller scale farmers. For instance, farmers have described first‐hand how asset constraints produce inequities in accessing available infrastructure, equipment, resources, and software, which has impacted their ability to participate in digital agriculture altogether (Rotz ). In the following section we explore these issues in more detail, with a focus on three key concerns; data ownership and control, the top‐down nature of agricultural technology production, and data security.…”

Section: Digital Agriculture: Historic and Political Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Politics of Digital Agricultural Technologies: A Preliminary Review

et al. 2019

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Digital technologies are being developed and adopted across the agro-food system, from farm to fork. Within decision-making spaces, however, little attention is being paid to political factors arising from such technological developments. This review draws from critical social sciences to examine emerging technologies and big data systems in agriculture and assesses some key issues arising in the field. We begin with an introduction and review of the so-called 'digital revolution' and then briefly outline how political economy is effective for understanding major challenges for governing technologies and data systems in agriculture. These challenges include: (1) data ownership and control, (2) the production of technologies and data development, and (3) data security. We then use literature and examples to consider the extent to which the political and economic landscape can be shifted to support greater equity in agriculture, while reflecting on structural challenges and limits. In doing so, we emphasise that while there are significant systemic tensions between digital ag-tech development and agroecological approaches, we do not see them as mutually exclusive per se. This article intends to provide decision-makers, practitioners and scholars from a wide range of disciplines with a timely assessment of agro-food digitalisation that attends to political economic factors. In doing so, this article contributes to policy and decision-making discussions, which, from our perspective, continue to be rather technocentric in nature while paying little attention to how digital technologies can support agroecological systems specifically.

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Section: Digital Agriculture: What Is It?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Digital Agriculture: Historic and Political Dimensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics of Digital Agricultural Technologies: A Preliminary Review

et al. 2019

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“…In fact, agricultural companies also partner with organisations that attempt to involve farmers in advocating for the industry (e.g., AgChat Foundation or Agriculture More Than Ever). On one hand, this advocacy draws on spontaneous vernacular online activity of farmers (Burgess et al 2015), while, on the other hand, agricultural communication experts attempt to animate this activity for the benefit of the industry by providing communication training for farmers and organising campaigns, aiming at sourcing content from farmers (Brewster 2015;Rotz 2018). Involving farmers in communication work seems problematic due to their largely vulnerable position in the value chain.…”

Section: Social Media and The Governance Of Agro-food Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hashtag hijacking and crowdsourcing transparency: social media affordances and the governance of farm animal protection

Rodak

2019

Agric Hum Values

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The post-war Western world has seen a gradual shift from government to governance, a process that also concerned the issues related to agro-food sustainability, such as food quality, environmental impact, social justice, and farm animal welfare. Scholars believe that social media are a new site that reconfigures relations between various actors involved in the governance of these problems. However, empirical research on this matter remains scarce. This paper fills this gap by examining the case of Februdairy, a Twitter hashtag campaign to promote the British dairy industry, hijacked by animal protection activists. For this case, I employ the relational perspective on technology affordances—as operationalised by Faraj and Azad (in: Leonard et al. (eds), Materiality and organizing. Social interaction in a technological world, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012)—to highlight two distinct strategic modes of embracement of social media functionalities by the opposing groups: hashtag hijacking and crowdsourcing transparency. The analysis reveals also that a pre-existing social structure of the agro-food system conditions reconfiguration of social relations by technology in a way that actually strengthens the tendency to govern the issue of farm animal protection with market mechanisms.

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“…However, these reconnections take added time and effort for both the consumer and producer (Albrecht & Smithers, 2018;Hoey & Sponseller, 2018). Whereas alternative producers attempt to connect with consumers, mainstream producers tout the importance of science and its essentialism in food production (Rotz, 2018). Simultaneously, the same farmers believed consumers question science and prefer science be removed from food production (Rotz, 2018).…”

Section: Farmer Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Though much attention has been paid to the failing relationships between producers of all kinds and agricultural companies such as Monsanto, few studies have addressed inter-farmer relations (Kinchy, 2012). One study found rising competition between farmers (Rotz, 2018). Another study found that organic producers did not believe they were being served by Extension as well as conventional producers because agents did not understand organic producers' perspectives (Crawford et al, 2015).…”

Section: Farmer Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%