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Paper short abstract

This presentation traces how the epistemic logic of precision extends from digital agriculture toward agroecology, producing "precision-agroecology" as a convergence that tends to legitimise a weak, measurable form of agroecology compatible with the logic of precision.

Paper long abstract

Over the past decade, R&D programmes and official documents have increasingly promoted the coupling of digital technology and agro-ecological principles as an obvious solution for the sustainable future of agri-food systems, which can be referred to as “precision-agroecology”. Distinguished from precision agriculture in the late 20th century–criticized for its focus on productivity, the convergence of digital- and agro-ecological agriculture, which still relies on data, sensors, models, and robotics, is expected to make future agri-food systems more knowable, predictable, and governable, therefore desirable. Yet, while studies on agroecology and, separately, digital agriculture abound, few bring the two together into dialogue around the construction of their coupling—from digital and ecological transitions to the digital-ecological transition. How is this coupling produced, narrated, and legitimised? What implications does this construction generate politically and epistemically? To answer these questions, drawing on official documents and interviews with their authors, we trace how the epistemic logic of precision—“observe, measure, intervene at the right time and place”—has extended from precision agriculture toward “precision-agroecology”. We argue that “precision-agroecology” aligns heterogeneous, even conflicting sociotechnical imaginaries of digitalisation and agroecology, through visionary and discursive processes and institutional arrangements—by translating agro-ecology into variables compatible with the logic of precision; tending to legitimise a “weak”, measurable and governable form of agroecology; and by stabilising a horizon for “precision agroecology”. This coupling brings together two partly incompatible imaginaries, with precision agriculture emerging victorious and regaining legitimacy through its agro-ecologisation.