Presentation short abstract

This paper examines how large-scale white farmers in post-Apartheid South Africa imagine agricultural futures through security and standardization rather than sustainability. It analyzes the digitalization-security nexus amid populist politics and contested land relations.

Presentation long abstract

Agricultural futures are imagined and enacted differently across global contexts. While farmers in the global North increasingly frame their visions around productivity optimization and environmental sustainability, South African farmers articulate distinct imaginaries shaped by their unique socio-political landscape. This paper examines how large-scale white farmers in post-Apartheid South Africa envision and perform the future of farming in a context marked by heightened populist and authoritarian tendencies.

Drawing on interviews and ethnographic observation, this research reveals that South African farmers' imaginaries center on security and standardization as responses to complex supply chain pressures and perceived existential threats. Unlike their Northern counterparts, these farmers mobilize digital technologies less as tools for precision agriculture or environmental stewardship, and more as mechanisms for securing property, ensuring traceability, and meeting increasingly stringent certification requirements demanded by global value chains.

This paper contributes to debates on digital agrarian futures by centering the nexus of digitalization and security in Southern contexts. It demonstrates how race, land politics, and economic precarity shape technological adoption patterns and future-making practices in ways that diverge significantly from dominant narratives emerging from the global North. By examining these situated imaginaries, the paper challenges universalizing assumptions about agricultural digitalization and highlights how historical legacies and contemporary political tensions mediate farmers' engagements with digital infrastructures. Ultimately, it argues for greater attention to how security concerns reshape the politics of digital agriculture in contexts marked by deep inequality and contested belonging.