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Paper short abstract

Virtual fencing promises to harmonize human-animal interactions by installing a data-driven mobility infrastructure on the pasture. This contribution critically examines these promises of an alleged ‘otherwise’ of pasture management from a media-theoretical and infrastructure-critical perspective.

Paper long abstract

The rapidly spreading technology of virtual fencing (VF) promises to make driving cows and cattle less stressful, more efficient, and highly flexible. By delegating practices traditionally shaped by close and conflict-laden human-animal interactions to smart wearables these systems seek to transform pasture management into an automated and data-driven mobility infrastructure. Marketed as a technological alternative to stressful and violent forms of animal handling, virtual fencing is accompanied by powerful imaginaries of harmonious human-animal relations and by visions of a pasture without human presence.

From an operational perspective, VF-systems do not merely install virtual boundaries on the pasture. They steer animals through micro-temporal sensory stimuli in order to control their spatial distribution. Essential practices of guidance and coordination are thus delegated to self-learning algorithms and decision models that act directly on animal bodies, enabling highly interventional and automated forms of management.

This contribution critically examines these promises of harmonization and flexibility from a media-theoretical and infrastructure-critical perspective. It situates virtual fencing within broader transformations of industrial animal agriculture, where digitalization and automation are framed as solutions to persistent crises of labor, animal welfare, and environmental disruption. Focusing on the infrastructural and operational conditions of these systems, the paper shows how algorithmic time regimes and fickle communication infrastructures become embedded in the contingent processes of the pasture. Rather than simply enacting an ‘otherwise’ of animal agriculture, virtual fencing emerges as a technological reconfiguration that stabilizes existing production logics while redistributing care, control, and responsibility across animals, farmers, and digital infrastructures.