Format/Structure

In-person panel

Long Abstract

The rapid proliferation of digital technologies in the context of agricultural production has ushered in both challenges and opportunities for farmers and farm workers. An emerging literature highlights the ways in which the development and adoption of these technologies both reflect and reinforce persistently unequal and extractive power relations. The rapid integration of these technologies in agricultural contexts intersects with digitalization and automation trends in finance and investing, affecting the ways in which nature can be and is commodified. These technologies are changing what it means to farm and, by extension, what it means to be a farmer, raising critical questions about the epistemic politics of agriculture at the intersection of social, environmental, and data justice. At the same time, emerging technologies may offer more appropriate and potentially subversive modes to foster sentience, connection, place based-knowledge and collective change. 

Grounded in concerns about the relationship between digital technologies and diverse forms of socio-ecological knowledge, this panel hopes to explore the possibility of a “productive tension”(van der Velden et al, 2023:3) between digital technologies and agricultural knowledge and practice. Drawing on experiences from both industrial and smallholder agriculture across the Global North and South, it hopes to raise questions about the “the future of agriculture” by examining the conditions and consequences of the growth of digital technologies in the context of agricultural production.

We seek both traditional and multi-modal contributions that offer diverse perspectives on the development and adoption of – and resistance to – automation and digitalization in agricultural settings, as well as contributions that situate these developments historically.

This Panel has 7 pending paper proposals.
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