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Paper short abstract

While recognizing that goal-oriented programs narrow desirable futures, we argue portfolio-level assembling of data infrastructures and funded projects can expand what policy monitoring can see and act on, reopening the range of futures that can be treated as plausible, as the EU AgData illustrates.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how mission-oriented research programs fix the conditions under which evidence and innovation can be recognized—and how that same architecture can also expand the futures that policy monitoring can see and pursue.

Taking the EU “Agriculture of Data” (AgData) Partnership as its empirical case, the paper traces how the EU’s normative frameworks for agri-food digital transformation are encoded in a pre-established activity catalogue that defines what counts as relevant research and innovation for both agricultural production and policy monitoring. A use-case centered program structure then translates these priorities into concrete tasks anchored in both on-the-ground agricultural utility and policy-evidence generation. Together, these mechanisms act as gatekeeping thresholds into a governance assemblage (Li, 2007) that embeds its normative vision of what agri-food futures are worth pursuing, narrowing what approaches should be recognized from the outset (Stirling, 2008).

The paper's central claim, however, is that this narrowing is not the whole story. When projects produce evidence in isolation, what lies outside their individual frameworks remains invisible. By contrast, when data infrastructures and funded projects are coordinated at the portfolio level—mapped onto a shared portfolio framework and aligned through interoperable standards—policy monitoring can see and act on a wider set of phenomena, broadening the range of futures that can subsequently be treated as plausible.

The paper draws on participant observation in AgData steering committee meetings, work package task leader meetings, and funded project coordination sessions, combined with documentary analysis of AgData's core partnership and operational texts.