Overcoming Barriers to Including Agricultural Workers in the Co‐Design of New AgTech: Lessons from a COVID‐19‐Present World

Abstract

Collaborative design (co‐design) is a design strategy for generating relevant and socially acceptable technologies, and is inherently political by nature of its inclusion of particular groups and interests. This paper explores how to ethically and responsibly prepare for, notice and overcome barriers to including agricultural workers in the co‐design of new agricultural technologies. Drawing from feminist science and technology studies (STS), we offer response‐able mattering as an analytic tool to explore how the COVID‐19 pandemic caused and illuminated existing barriers to inclusion within an Aotearoa New Zealand‐based co‐design project. We argue that addressing barriers to inclusion requires prioritizing relationships and relationship building in technology design projects. This prioritization must account for a multiplicity of relationship building tempos (e.g., the time/pace necessary to ethically establish and maintain research relationships), temporal tensions (e.g., the pace of technology development versus the ability to meaningfully include collaborators), and un/intended relational cuts (e.g., boundaries or barriers affecting relationship building).

Intellectual property meets transdisciplinary co-design: prioritizing responsiveness in the production of new AgTech through located response-ability

“…These examples show that the societal costs paid to maintain an IP-dominant system—paid by beneficial technologies going unpursued, or by researchers pursuing technical directions out of direct-relationship with possible end-users or wider societal actors—is likely underestimated, particularly in the field of AgTech where end-users such as farmers and agricultural workers are often not considered or left out of technology design processes (Burch and Legun 2021 ; Rotz et al 2019a , b ). More broadly, these examples suggest that the solution is not merely about including the relevant actors “upstream,” or earlier in technology development processes, because IP incessantly requires and produces boundaries throughout these processes.…”

“…As researchers move from laboratories out into relations and sites of use, they will be forced to contend with these new responsibilities (and their transforming response-abilities), as well as any boundaries existing and emerging within these new relations. The inclusion of previously excluded actors introduces a number of new (or previously ignored) concerns, ethical considerations and power dynamics that also need to be contended with in practice (Borch and Throne-Holst 2021 ; Burch and Legun 2021 ; da Silva et al 2019 ; de Bakker et al 2014 ; Fritz and Meinhertz 2020 ; Nathan 2015 ; Ribeiro et al 2018 ). As Regan ( 2021 ) has argued, practicing more responsible forms of research and innovation will require researchers build new competencies and undergo changes in mindset.…”

“…Central research collaborators include industry partners from the winegrape, apple, blueberry and robotics manufacturing industries, and growers from the winegrape, apple and blueberry industries. While agricultural workers are slowly being included within the project, they are being included through interviews and usability studies, and not the annual co-design workshops (described in more detail below) (see Burch and Legun 2021 ; Burch et al 2022 ).…”

“…Recently, scholars have been advocating for the use of transdisciplinary co-design in the field of AgTech (Kenny and Regan 2021 ; Lioutas and Charatsari 2021 ; McCampbell et al 2021b ), and such considerations were central in the development of the MaaraTech Project. Within MaaraTech, project leadership’s commitment to transdisciplinary co-design materialized as a team of interdisciplinary scholars and agricultural consultants engaging with possible end-users: industry partners and growers in meetings and co-design workshops, and (eventually) agricultural supervisors, trainers and workers through interviews with social scientists (see Burch and Legun 2021 ; Burch et al 2022 ).…”

Towards diversified industrial cropping systems?

“…Burch and Legun 2021), with calls to build reflexivity into project methodologies (e.g Rossing et al 2021)…”