Description
The development of digital technologies is often presented as a response to the current challenges facing agriculture, promising both a better future for farmers and benefits for society as a whole. Digital agriculture would finally solve the equation of feeding the population and respecting the environment. As such, it mobilizes significant public and private resources. However, its effects are the subject of heated controversy.
Ecologization and Digitalization of Agriculture analyzes how digital technology fits into and influences the various ecological trajectories of agriculture. It explores the representations, uses and transformations of practices that its deployment engenders. The book shows that current digitalization often conflicts with the strong ecologization of agriculture, in terms of techniques, objectives, reasoning, time frames, or political and social issues. However, forms of hybridization appear possible, as models of industrial ecologization or as part of a more global transformation of digitalization, rethinking its technical, economic and political models.
Table of Contents
Introduction xi
Part 1. The Development of Digital Technology in Agriculture: An Innovation Process 1
Chapter 1. Towards Digital Agriculture? 3
1.1. Agricultural evolution: modernization and ecologization 4
1.1.1. Agricultural modernization 4
1.1.2. Integrating environmental concerns 7
1.2. Digital technology in agriculture 10
1.2.1. Characteristics of digital technology 10
1.2.2. Digital technology as an object of research in social sciences 14
1.2.3. Digital technology in agriculture 18
1.3. Transformation of the agricultural sector 24
1.3.1. Changes at the actor level in the agricultural sector 24
1.3.2. Public policies and digital development 29
1.3.3. Digital technology uses in farms 33
1.4. Controversies surrounding digital technology and ecology in agriculture 36
1.4.1. Digital technology and ecology 37
1.4.2. Controversies in the agricultural sector 39
1.4.3. Controversies surrounding digital technology and pathways to ecologization 44
1.5. Conclusion 46
Chapter 2. Political Economy of Innovation and the Study of Agricultural Transformations 49
2.1. A systemic approach to digital technology in the agricultural sector 50
2.1.1. Digital development in agriculture: an innovation process 50
2.1.2. Transformation of the AIS 59
2.1.3. Choice of a structural analysis of innovation systems 63
2.2. Integrating sectoral heterogeneity to study ecological agriculture 66
2.2.1. Integration of ecological issues in agriculture 66
2.2.2. Political economy of AISs 70
2.2.3. Integrating heterogeneity within the agricultural sector 72
2.3. Integrating multiple scales to study AISs 78
2.3.1. Integration of the microeconomic scale 78
2.3.2. Interaction between analysis scales 83
2.4. Conclusion 87
Chapter 3. Digital Technology and Ecological Agriculture: Multi-scale Transformations 91
3.1. Perceptions and commitments of actors in the innovation system 94
3.1.1. Components of the agricultural innovation system 94
3.1.2. Focusing on the French agricultural sector 99
3.1.3. Abductive coding analysis 99
3.2. Uses of digital technology and the transformations of practices in agricultural operations 100
3.2.1. Investigating practices and uses 100
3.2.2. Focus on the field crop sector in Occitanie 102
3.2.3. Mixed method of analysis 103
3.3. Intermediate organizations: between diffusion and transformation of innovations 104
3.3.1. Intermediaries and cooperatives in innovation systems 104
3.3.2. Dual representation of agricultural cooperatives 107
3.3.3. Focusing on the wine industry in Occitanie 108
3.3.4. Cooperative strategies 110
3.4. Conclusion 110
Part 2. The Development of Digital Technology in Agriculture at Different Scales 111
Chapter 4. The Development of Digital Technology in the Agricultural Innovation System 113
4.1. Perceptions of actors in the agricultural innovation system 114
4.1.1. Diversity of expectations according to organic and conventional paradigms 115
4.1.2. Knowledge and technologies at the heart of the digitalization process 119
4.1.3. Different partnership strategies with digital actors 120
4.1.4. Low awareness of the internal heterogeneity of the agricultural innovation system by digital actors 122
4.1.5. Major difference between paradigms: the risks perceived by actors 123
4.2. Digitalization beyond paradigms 125
4.3. Diversity of digitalization trajectories envisioned 127
4.4. Analysis of innovation systems reinforced by taking into account heterogeneities and power relations 128
4.5. Contributions and perspectives 130
Chapter 5. The Development of Digital Technology in Agricultural Operations 133
5.1. Diversity of technologies and uses of digital technology 135
5.1.1. Sample description 135
5.1.2. Adoption of digital technologies in our sample 136
5.1.3. Use of farm parcel management software 138
5.1.4. Use of guidance 140
5.1.5. Modulation use 142
5.1.6. Internet usage 144
5.2. Profiles of use 144
5.2.1. Digital technologies for production associated with productive models 146
5.2.2. Digital technologies for information and communication associated with individual practices 149
5.3. Digital uses and ecologization 151
5.3.1. DTP, industrialization and weak or symbolic ecologization 151
5.3.2. DTC, knowledge and ecologization 155
5.3.3. Trajectories 156
5.4. Digitalization: an imposed, desired or contested trajectory? 157
5.4.1. The influence of regulation, institutions and public policies 157
5.4.2. Farmers committed to and driving the development of digital technology 159
5.4.3. Opposition to digital technology 160
5.5. Contributions and perspectives 162
Chapter 6. The Role of Cooperatives in the Development of Digital Technology 165
6.1. Cooperatives engaged in various forms of ecologization 166
6.2. Cooperatives involved in digitalization projects 168
6.3. New functions of cooperatives with digital technology 171
6.3.1. Economic intermediation 171
6.3.2. Technical intermediation 173
6.3.3. Knowledge intermediation 173
6.3.4. Regulatory intermediation 175
6.3.5. The evolution of their role as a collective organization. 175
6.4. The role of bridging digital and environmental challenges 175
6.4.1. Articulation of these issues through the functions of intermediaries 175
6.4.2. Differences according to the type of cooperative 177
6.5. Contributions and perspectives 177
Chapter 7. Discussion: Digital Technologies for What Kind of Ecological Agriculture? 179
7.1. Digital trajectories linked to agricultural models 180
7.1.1. The diversity of digital trajectories 180
7.1.2. Aspirations associated with agricultural models 182
7.1.3. Uses embedded in production models 183
7.2. The continuation of historical transformations of the agricultural sector 184
7.2.1. Digital technology as an accelerator of ongoing transformations 185
7.2.2. Restructuring of the agricultural innovation system 189
7.3. The complex links between digital technology and environmental issues 193
7.3.1. The oppositions between digital technology and forms of ecological agriculture 193
7.3.2. Potential hybridizations to be built 198
7.4. Guiding innovation 200
Conclusion 203
References 209
Index 241
