Governing Farmers through data? Digitization and the Question of Autonomy in Agri-environmental governance
The digitization of the agricultural sector is connected with a number of promises that have been widely debated in both the public and the academic spheres. But attention has been mainly focused on farm production or management techniques, often neglecting the realm of governance, which has also begun a digital transformation. This article explores the premises of an informational model of governance and the integration of a logic of big data into agri-environmental governance in Switzerland. More specifically, it examines this process from the perspective of the autonomy of the farmers, by looking more specifically at how these changes in governance create or not possibilities for farmer autonomization, in terms of identity, action, and structures. In spite of some discourses that present digitization as a tool to lighten administrative constraints and a way to aid in the independent management of agricultural activity, our analysis reveals a more qualified picture: at the present time, digitization reinforces the bureaucratic approach to governance, and the contribution of digital technologies to the interests of the farmers themselves remains minimal. In conclusion, it appears that the accent that has been placed on the service done for farmers is primarily part of a rhetoric aimed at encouraging involvement, and that rhetoric contributes to making other interests, which are more central to the constitution of an informational governance model, invisible.
The project, the everyday, and reflexivity in sociotechnical agri‑food assemblages: proposing a conceptual model of digitalisation
Digital technologies have opened up new perspectives in thinking about the future of food and farming. Not only do these new technologies promise to revolutionise our way of meeting global food demand, they do so by boldly claiming that they can reduce their environmental impacts. However, they also have the potential to transform the organisation of agri-food sys- tems more fundamentally. Drawing on assemblage theory, we propose a conceptual model of digitalisation organised around three facets: digitalisation as a project; “everyday digitalisation”; and reflexive digitalisation. These facets reflect different relations between concrete practices and representations, imaginaries, and narratives, while representing different modes of agency: the collective, the distributed, and the individual, which, we argue, highlight contrasting ways for human and non- human actors to engage with digitalisation. With this model anchored in assemblage theory, we offer a tool for critically and comprehensively engaging with the complexity and multiplicity of digitalisation as a sociotechnical process. We then apply our theoretical framework to two ethnographic studies, one explores the growth of digital technologies in Switzerland as a way to govern and monitor national agriculture, the other focuses on Indonesia, where small digital startups have begun to dot the landscape. By identifying the material and semiotic processes occurring in each case, we notice similar issues being raised in terms of how digitalisation is co-constructed in society.