Abstract
An emerging discourse about automated agricultural machinery imagines farms as places where farmers and workers do not need to be, but also implicitly frames farms as intolerable places where people do not want to be. Only autonomous machines, this story goes, can relieve farmers and workers of this presumed burden by letting them ‘farm at a distance’. In return for this distanced autonomy, farmers are promised increased control over their work-life balance and greater farm productivity from letting ‘smart’ robots assume control over the operational environment. Drawing upon the ways that these machines are promoted by manufacturers in various media, we trace the nascent contours of what we term a liberatory sociotechnical imaginary for agricultural automation across three cases—automated milking systems, self-driving tractors, and robotic strawberry pickers. We show how promises for new freedoms and autonomy are flexibly deployed to respond to distinct frictions that farmers, workers, and even farm animals experience in different modes of industrial agriculture. However, underlying these promises is the purposefully understated self-interest of manufacturers, who stand to gain further control over farms if automated technologies assume a central role in agriculture. Through the liberatory rhetoric, we contend, the imaginary seeks to enroll farmers into a socio-technical network that creates new relations of dependence upon the companies who design, sell, maintain, and often retain ownership over automated technologies. While potentially powerful, this imaginary may nonetheless fail to coalesce as farmers, workers, and agroecosystems exert their own agency on automated imaginaries and technological futures for agriculture.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
We use “farmer” to refer to a farm’s owner or primary operator, i.e. the person[s] who will buy automated technologies or services, but recognize that many farms are corporate, with “decisions” reflecting a confluence of inputs and constraints (Duncan et al. 2021; Baur 2020).
We focus on how farm machinery manufacturers frame the experience of industrial farms oriented toward commodity supply chains, the primary customer base for automated farm technologies. This vision for automated farms may align poorly with diversified or small-holder farms.
Although some dairies with AMS allow cows this freedom, many keep cows inside the barn, replacing pasture grazing with automated feeders, to ensure an optimal schedule (Holloway et al. 2014).
South Korea, for instance, seeks to build a domestic AMS manufacturing industry to “help reduce labor burdens off old [over 60] dairy farmers’ shoulders” (Park 2021).
One profile of an early AMS adopter quotes the head of the Texas Association of Dairymen: “Our dairy industry continues to shrink in numbers… We’re down to 333 dairies, we continue to increase our output, but there is [sic] very few like this that require no milk-hands, and no one there 24 h a day, seven days a week to milk the cows like in our normal facilities” (Zapata 2021).
DeLaval advertises its VMS™ milking system V300 as the “The right fit for any-size dairy” (DeLaval 2022). SAC claims its Gemini™ system provides “a suitable solution for every type of farm, regardless of size, and every management style, tailored to the individual needs of the dairy farmer” (SAC 2021).
In contrast to major manufacturers, California-based manufacturer Monarch aims to combine electric vehicle and self-driving technology to produce a lighter, compact tractor to reach smaller vegetable, fruit, and grape farmers.
By one account, Deere has over 50% of the US market for large tractors and farm combines (Danylov 2022).
At CES 2022, John Deere announced “See and Spray,” an autonomous spraying implement that uses machine vision and AI to distinguish crops from weeds, which are precision-sprayed with herbicide.
A full video demonstration can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/dXNRi4R0D2k (John Deere UK 2020).
A January 4, 2022 CNET video shows Deere’s Operation Center smartphone app in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSdIgGin_rk.
The action is best seen in Harvest CROO’s 2021 promotional video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO1mZrB5XK8.
Traptic was acquired by the New York vertical farm company Bowery in February 2022.
References
AMS Galaxy USA. 2022. Proud to introduce our next generation milking robot: The Galaxy Merlin2G is the latest technology for milking automation. AMS Galaxy USA. https://amsgalaxy.com/milking/. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Anderson, Lewis. 2019. Announcing Traptic—Strawberry Picking Robots. Traptic. https://www.traptic.com/traptic-blog/2019/5/21/announcing-traptic-strawberry-picking-robots. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Anderson, Lewis. 2020. Where traptic’s robotic harvesting fits in a post COVID-19 world. Medium. https://medium.com/@Traptic/where-traptics-robotic-harvesting-fits-in-a-post-covid-19-world-fff93f3ea4f9. Accessed 28 July 2022.
Asseng, Senthold, and Frank Asche. 2019. Future farms without farmers. Science Robotics 4 (27): eaaw1875. https://doi.org/10.1126/scirobotics.aaw1875.
Augère-Granier, Marie-Laure. 2018. The EU dairy sector: Main features, challenges and prospects. PE 630.345. European Parliamentary Research Service. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2018/630345/EPRS_BRI(2018)630345_EN.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2022.
Baur, Patrick, and Alastair Iles. 2022. Replacing humans with machines: A historical look at technology politics in California agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10341-2.
Bell, Shannon Elizabeth, Alicia Hullinger, and Lilian Brislen. 2015. Manipulated masculinities: Agribusiness, deskilling, and the rise of the businessman-farmer in the United States. Rural Sociology 80: 285–313. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12066.
Binswanger, Hans. 1986. Agricultural mechanization: A comparative historical perspective. The World Bank Research Observer 1: 27–56.
Bové, Jose, and Francois Dufour. 2001. The world is not for sale: Farmers against junk food. Translated by Anna de Casparis, 1st ed. London: Verso.
Bramley, R.G.V., and J. Ouzman. 2019. Farmer attitudes to the use of sensors and automation in fertilizer decision-making: Nitrogen fertilization in the Australian grains sector. Precision Agriculture 20: 157–175. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11119-018-9589-y.
Braverman, Harry. 1998. Labor and monopoly capital: The degradation of work in the twentieth century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Bronson, Kelly. 2022. The immaculate conception of data: Agribusiness, activists, and their shared politics of the future. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Bronson, Kelly, and Irena Knezevic. 2016. Big data in food and agriculture. Big Data & Society. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716648174.
Callon, Michel. 1986. The sociology of an actor-network: The case of the electric vehicle. In Mapping the dynamics of science and technology: Sociology of science in the real world, ed. Michel Callon, John Law, and Arie Rip, 19–34. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Carlisle, Liz, and Albie Miles. 2013. Closing the knowledge gap: How the USDA could tap the potential of biologically diversified farming systems. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development 3: 219–225. https://doi.org/10.5304/jafscd.2013.034.025.
Carlisle, Liz, Maywa Montenegro, Marcia S. de Wit, Adam Calo DeLonge, Christy Getz, Joanna Ory, Katherine Munden-Dixon, et al. 2019. Securing the future of US agriculture: The case for investing in new entry sustainable farmers. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 7: 17. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.356.
Carolan, Michael. 2020. Automated agrifood futures: Robotics, labor and the distributive politics of digital agriculture. The Journal of Peasant Studies 47: 184–207. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2019.1584189.
Cobby, Roy William. 2020. Searching for sustainability in the digital agriculture debate: An alternative approach for a systemic transition. Teknokultura. Revista De Cultura Digital y Movimientos Sociales 17: 224–238. https://doi.org/10.5209/tekn.69475.
Cogato, Alessia, Marta Brščić, Hao Guo, Francesco Marinello, and Andrea Pezzuolo. 2021. Challenges and tendencies of automatic milking systems (AMS): A 20-years systematic review of literature and patents. Animals 11: 356. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11020356.
Cornejo, Flavio. 2011. What farmwork does to a body. TEDxFruitvale. www.youtube.com/watch?v=esJ6ho_pLZY. Accessed 14 April 2023.
Cronon, William. 1991. Nature’s metropolis: Chicago and the great west. New York: W.W. Norton.
Danylov, Oleg. 2022. In 2030, 10% of tractor manufacturer John Deere’s revenue will come from software sales. Mehza Media. https://mezha.media/en/2022/09/15/in-2030-10-of-tractor-manufacturer-john-deere-s-revenue-will-come-from-software-sales/. Accessed 15 November 2022.
Daum, Thomas. 2021. Farm robots: Ecological utopia or dystopia? Trends in Ecology & Evolution. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2021.06.002.
Deere & Company. 2022a. Farmers need autonomy now. https://www.deere.com/en/stories/featured/farmers-need-autonomy-now/. Accessed 26 July 2022a.
Deere & Company. 2022b. The future of farming technology. https://www.deere.co.uk/en/agriculture/future-of-farming/. Accessed 27 July 2022b.
DeLaval. 2022. DeLaval VMSTM milking system V300. https://www.delaval.com/en-us/explore-our-farm-solutions/milking/delaval-vms-series/delaval-vms-milking-system-v300/. Accessed 27 July 2022.
DeLonge, Marcia S., Albie Miles, and Liz Carlisle. 2016. Investing in the transition to sustainable agriculture. Environmental Science & Policy 55: 266–273. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envsci.2015.09.013.
Ditzler, Lenora, and Clemens Driessen. 2022. Automating agroecology: How to design a farming robot without a monocultural mindset? Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 35: 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-021-09876-x.
Donnelly, Grace. 2022. John Deere thinks its self-driving tractor can help feed the world. Emerging Tech Brew. https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/stories/2022/01/07/john-deere-thinks-its-self-driving-tractor-can-help-feed-the-world-but-scale-remains-far-away. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Drach, Uri, Ilan Halachmi, Tal Pnini, Ido Izhaki, and Amir Degani. 2017. Automatic herding reduces labour and increases milking frequency in robotic milking. Biosystems Engineering 155: 134–141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biosystemseng.2016.12.010.
Driessen, Clemens, and Leonie F. M. Heutinck. 2015. Cows desiring to be milked? Milking robots and the co-evolution of ethics and technology on Dutch dairy farms. Agriculture and Human Values 32: 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9515-5.
Duncan, E., A. Glaros, D.Z. Ross, and E. Nost. 2021. New but for whom? Discourses of innovation in precision agriculture. Agriculture and Human Values 38: 1181–1199. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10244-8.
Editorial Staff. 1979. New harvesting horizons. Western Fruit Grower, December.
Eller, Donnelle. 2022. John Deere introduces Iowa-built driverless tractor, touted as the next revolution in agriculture. The Des Moines Register, January 5. https://www.yahoo.com/now/john-deere-introduces-iowa-built-204942907.html. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Figueroa-Helland, L, C. Thomas, and A. P. Aguilera. 2018. Decolonizing Food Systems: Food Sovereignty, Indigenous Revitalization, and Agroecology as Counter-Hegemonic Movements. Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 17: 173–201. https://doi.org/10.1163/15691497-12341473.
Finstad, Terje, Margrethe Aune, and Kine Ariela Egseth. 2021. The domestication triangle: How humans, animals and technology shape each other—The case of automated milking systems. Journal of Rural Studies 84: 211–220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.03.006.
Fitzgerald, Deborah. 1993. Farmers deskilled: Hybrid corn and farmers’ work. Technology and Culture 34: 324–343. https://doi.org/10.2307/3106539.
Fitzgerald, Deborah Kay. 2003. Every farm a factory: The industrial ideal in American agriculture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Giles, Frank. 2018. Get in gear now for agriculture’s robotic revolution. Growing Produce. https://www.growingproduce.com/fruits/get-in-gear-now-for-agricultures-robotic-revolution/. Accessed 28 July 2022.
Guthman, Julie. 2019. Wilted: Pathogens, chemicals, and the fragile future of the strawberry industry. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hansen, Bjørn Gunnar. 2015. Robotic milking-farmer experiences and adoption rate in Jæren, Norway. Journal of Rural Studies 41: 109–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2015.08.004.
Harvest CROO Robotics. 2022. Our harvesting service. https://www.harvestcroorobotics.com/services. Accessed 28 July 2022.
Henke, Christopher. 2008. Cultivating science, harvesting power: Science and industrial agriculture in California. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hilgartner, S. 2015. Capturing the Imaginary: Vanguards, visions and the synthetic biology revolution. In Science and Democracy, ed. Stephen Hilgartner, Clark Miller, and Rob Hagendijk. London: Routledge.
Hodge, Kate. 2020. Coronavirus accelerates the rise of the robot harvester. Financial Times, July 1.
Holloway, Lewis, and Christopher Bear. 2017. Bovine and human becomings in histories of dairy technologies: Robotic milking systems and remaking animal and human subjectivity. BJHS Themes 2: 215–234. https://doi.org/10.1017/bjt.2017.2.
Holloway, Lewis, Christopher Bear, and Katy Wilkinson. 2014. Re-capturing bovine life: Robot–cow relationships, freedom and control in dairy farming. Journal of Rural Studies 33: 131–140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2013.01.006.
Holmes, Seth M. 2011. Structural vulnerability and hierarchies of ethnicity and citizenship on the farm. Medical Anthropology 30: 425–449. https://doi.org/10.1080/01459740.2011.576728.
Hough, Craig. 2019. Inquiry into the performance of Australia’s dairy industry and the profitability of Australian dairy farmers since 2000. Melbourne, Australia: Australian Dairy Farmers Ltd. http://australiandairyfarmers.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/ADF-submission-to-the-Inquiry-into-the-performance-of-Australias-dairy-industry-and-the-profitability-of-Australian-dairy-farmers-since-deregulation-in-2000.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2022.
Iles, Alastair, Garrett Graddy-Lovelace, Maywa Montenegro, and Ryan Galt. 2016. Agricultural systems: Co-producing knowledge and food. In The handbook of science and technology studies, 4th edn, Ch 33, ed. Ulrike Felt, Rayvon Fouché, Clark A. Miller, and Laurel Smith-Doerr. Cambridge: MIT Press.
[IPES-Food] The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. 2017. Too big to feed: Exploring the impacts of mega-mergers, concentration, concentration of power in the agri-food sector. 3. Rome, Italy. www.ipes-food.org/_img/upload/files/Concentration_FullReport.pdf. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Jacobs, J.A., and J.M. Siegford. 2012. Invited review: The impact of automatic milking systems on dairy cow management, behavior, health, and welfare. Journal of Dairy Science 95: 2227–2247. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2011-4943.
James, Debbie. 2021. How one dairy farm installed robots to cut down milking time. Farmers Weekly, December 6, sec. Housing and handling. https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/housing/how-one-dairy-farm-installed-robots-to-cut-down-milking-time. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Jasanoff, Sheila. 2015. Future imperfect: Science, technology, and the imaginations of modernity. In Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power, ed. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun. Kim, 1–33. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Jiang, Hongzhe, Wei Wang, Chunyang Li, and Wei Wang. 2017. Innovation, practical benefits and prospects for the future development of automatic milking systems. Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering 4: 37–47. https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2016117.
John Deere. 2020. Command cab—Future of farming | John Deere. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXNRi4R0D2k. Accessed 15 November 2022.
Jones, Nicola. 2018. How to stop data centres from gobbling up the world’s electricity. Nature 561: 163–166. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-06610-y.
Kline, Ronald, and Trevor Pinch. 1996. Users as agents of technological change: The social construction of the automobile in the rural United States. Technology and Culture 37 (4): 763–795. https://doi.org/10.2307/3107097.
Kloppenburg, Jack, John Hendrickson, and G.W. Stevenson. 1996. Coming in to the foodshed. Agriculture and Human Values 13 (3): 33–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01538225.
Knickel, Karlheinz, Henk Renting, and Jan Douwe Van der. Ploeg. 2004. Multifunctionality in European agriculture. In Sustaining agriculture and the rural economy: Governance, policy and multifunctionality, ed. Floor Brouwer, 81–103. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Koehn, Mark. 2022. At Hinchley’s, robots bring dairy farming into the 21st century. Channel 3000, June 19. https://www.channel3000.com/robots-revolutionize-dairy-farming/. Accessed 26 July 2022.
de Koning, Kees. 2010. Automatic milking—Common practice on dairy farms. In Proc. Second North Am. Conf. on Robotic Milking, V59–V63. Elora, Canada: Precision Dairy Operators. http://precisiondairy.com/proceedings/s3dekoning.pdf. Accessed 20 July 2022.
Konrad, Kornelia, and Knud Böhle. 2019. Socio-technical futures and the governance of innovation processes—An introduction to the special issue. Futures 109: 101–107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2019.03.003.
Lajoie-O’Malley, Alana, Kelly Bronson, Simone van der Burg, and Laurens Klerkx. 2020. The future(s) of digital agriculture and sustainable food systems: An analysis of high-level policy documents. Ecosystem Services 45: 101183. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoser.2020.101183.
Lange, Steffen, Johanna Pohl, and Tilman Santarius. 2020. Digitalization and energy consumption: Does ICT reduce energy demand? Ecological Economics 176: 106760. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2020.106760.
Law, John, and Michel Callon. 1992. The life and death of an aircraft: A network analysis of technical change. In Shaping technology, building society: Studies in sociotechnical change, ed. Wiebe Bijker and John Law, 21–52. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Legun, Katharine, and Karly Burch. 2021. Robot-ready: How apple producers are assembling in anticipation of new AI robotics. Journal of Rural Studies 82: 380–390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.01.032.
Legun, Katharine, Karly Ann Burch, and Laurens Klerkx. 2022. Can a robot be an expert? The social meaning of skill and its expression through the prospect of autonomous AgTech. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10388-1.
Lely. 2022. Lely Astronaut A5: A new milestone in milking. https://www.lely.com/us/solutions/milking/astronaut-a5/. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Lowenberg-DeBoer, James, and Bruce Erickson. 2019. Setting the record straight on precision agriculture adoption. Agronomy Journal 111: 1552–1569. https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj2018.12.0779.
Luby, Christopher D., Cheryl Waldner, and Murray D. Jelinski. 2020. Update on demographics of the Canadian dairy industry for the period 2011 to 2016. The Canadian Veterinary Journal 61: 75–78.
Martin, Théo., Pierre Gasselin, Nathalie Hostiou, Gilles Feron, Lucette Laurens, François Purseigle, and Guillaume Ollivier. 2022. Robots and transformations of work in farm: A systematic review of the literature and a research agenda. Agronomy for Sustainable Development 42: 66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-022-00796-2.
McMichael, Philip. 2009. A food regime genealogy. The Journal of Peasant Studies 36: 139–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150902820354.
Middelveld, Senna, and Phil Macnaghten. 2021. Gene editing of livestock: Sociotechnical imaginaries of scientists and breeding companies in the Netherlands. Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene 9: 00073. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2020.00073.
Miles, Christopher. 2019. The combine will tell the truth: On precision agriculture and algorithmic rationality. Big Data & Society 6: 2053951719849444. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951719849444.
Morris, J. 1978. At last! Strawberry mechanization is on its way. Western Fruit Grower, March.
Morrison, Ryan. 2022. John Deere unveils its first self-driving tractor at CES. Daily Mail, January 6, sec. Science. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10374683/John-Deere-unveils-self-driving-tractor-controlled-smartphone.html. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Mueller, Natalie G., and Andrew Flachs. 2021. Domestication, crop breeding, and genetic modification are fundamentally different processes: Implications for seed sovereignty and agrobiodiversity. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-021-10265-3.
Munn, Luke. 2022. Automation is a myth. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Murphy, Mike. 2021. Tractors could maybe be fully autonomous sometime soon. Protocol, January 28. https://www.protocol.com/john-deere-farming-ai-autonomous. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Nelson, K., inventor. 1970. Automated milking system. DeLaval Separator Co, assignee. U.S. Patent 3,499,422.
Njuki, Eric. 2022. Sources, trends, and drivers of U.S. dairy productivity and efficiency. ERR-305. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service. http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/pub-details/?pubid=103300. Accessed 20 July 2022.
Nosowitz, Dan. 2017. John Deere is the 5th largest agricultural bank in the country. Modern Farmer. https://modernfarmer.com/2017/07/john-deere-lending/. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Nosowitz, Dan. 2022. John Deere ANNOUNCES FARMER-FREE AUTONOMOUS Tractor. Modern Farmer. https://modernfarmer.com/2022/01/john-deere-autonomous-tractor/. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Oudshoorn, Nelly, and Trevor Pinch. 2003. How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology. MIT Press.
Park, Sae-jin. 2021. S. Korea localizes robot milking machine to help old dairy farmers. Aju Business Daily, August 18. https://www.ajudaily.com/view/20210818145932420. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Peña, Devon. 2019. On intimacy with soils: Indigenous agroecology and biodynamics. In Indigenous food sovereignty in the United States: Restoring cultural knowledge, ed. Protecting Environments, Regaining Health, Devon A. Mihesuah, and Elizabeth Hoover. University of Oklahoma Press.
Penner, Patrick. 2022. Milking robots help Nicomen Island dairy farmer spend more time with family. Hope Standard, June 24. https://www.hopestandard.com/news/video-milking-robots-help-nicomen-island-dairy-farmer-spend-more-time-with-family/. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Petersen-Rockney, Margiana, Patrick Baur, S. Aidee Guzman, Franz Bender, Adam Calo, Federico Castillo, Kathryn De Master, et al. 2021. Narrow and brittle or broad and nimble? Comparing adaptive capacity in simplifying and diversifying farming systems. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2021.564900.
Porcher, Jocelyne. 2006. Well-being and suffering in livestock farming: Living conditions at work for people and animals. Sociologie Du Travail 48: e56–e70. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.soctra.2006.02.001.
Porcher, Jocelyne. 2011. The relationship between workers and animals in the pork industry: A shared suffering. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics 24: 3–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-010-9232-z.
Porcher, Jocelyne, and Tiphaine Schmitt. 2012. Dairy cows: Workers in the shadows? Society & Animals 20: 39–60. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853012X614350.
Rose, David Christian, Anna Barkemeyer, Auvikki de Boon, Catherine Price, and Dannielle Roche. 2022. The old, the new, or the old made new? Everyday counter-narratives of the so-called fourth agricultural revolution. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10374-7.
Rose, Daved Christian, and Jason Chilvers. 2018. Agriculture 4.0: Broadening responsible innovation in an era of smart farming. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2018.00087.
Rotz, Sarah, Evan Gravely, Ian Mosby, Emily Duncan, Elizabeth Finnis, Mervyn Horgan, Joseph LeBlanc, et al. 2019a. Automated pastures and the digital divide: How agricultural technologies are shaping labour and rural communities. Journal of Rural Studies 68: 112–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2019.01.023.
Rotz, Sarah, Emily Duncan, Matthew Small, Janos Botschner, Rozita Dara, Ian Mosby, Mark Reed, and Evan D.G.. Fraser. 2019b. The politics of digital agricultural technologies: A preliminary review. Sociologia Ruralis 59: 203–229. https://doi.org/10.1111/soru.12233.
Rural Migration News. 2020. Alternatives to hand labor in strawberries—Rural migration news blog | Migration dialogue. University of California, Davis. https://migration.ucdavis.edu/rmn/blog/post/?id=2504. Accessed 27 July 2022.
SAC. 2021. Gemini: Robotic dairy solutions. https://www.sacmilking.com/solutions/gemini-robotic-dairy-solutions-cows. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Salfer, J.A., K. Minegishi, W. Lazarus, E. Berning, and M.I. Endres. 2017. Finances and returns for robotic dairies. Journal of Dairy Science 100: 7739–7749. https://doi.org/10.3168/jds.2016-11976.
Schewe, Rebecca L., and Diana Stuart. 2015. Diversity in agricultural technology adoption: How are automatic milking systems used and to what end? Agriculture and Human Values 32: 199–213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9542-2.
Seabrook, John. 2019. The age of robot farmers. The New Yorker, April 8. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/15/the-age-of-robot-farmers. Accessed 24 January 2022.
Sippel, Sarah Ruth, and Moritz Dolinga. 2022. Constructing agri-food for finance: Startups, venture capital and food future imaginaries. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10383-6.
Smith, Elta. 2015. Corporate imaginaries of biotechnology and global governance: Syngenta, golden rice, and corporate social responsibility. In Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power, ed. Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyun. Kim, 254–276. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Šūmane, Sandra, Ilona Kunda, Karlheinz Knickel, Agnes Strauss, Talis Tisenkopfs, Ignacio des Ios. Rios, Maria Rivera, Tzruya Chebach, and Amit Ashkenazy. 2018. Local and farmers’ knowledge matters! How integrating informal and formal knowledge enhances sustainable and resilient agriculture. Journal of Rural Studies 59: 232–241. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.01.020.
Swanson, Heather, Anna Tsing, Nils Bubandt, and Elaine Gan. 2017. Introduction: Bodies tumbled into bodies. In Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the anthropocene, ed. Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, Nils Bubandt, Elaine Gan, and Heather Anne Swanson, M1–M14. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
TechCrunch. 2019. Startup battlefield: Session 1—Traptic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMzh3bagLeo. Accessed 28 July 2022.
Thompson, Paul B. 2018. Sustainable intensification as a sociotechnical imaginary. In Contested sustainability discourses in the agrifood system, ed. Douglas H. Constance, Jason T. Konefal, and Maki Hatanaka, 42–58. New York: Routledge.
Timmermann, Cristian, and Georges F. Félix. 2015. Agroecology as a vehicle for contributive justice. Agriculture and Human Values 32: 523–538. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-014-9581-8.
Traptic (acquired by Bowery Farming in 2022) [@traptic]. 2021. We don’t sell machines. Instead, we provide harvesting-as-a-service. This means farmers see an immediate improvement in their business without changing their behavior or making any big up-front investments https://t.co/Hhd3ued9hw. Tweet. Twitter. https://twitter.com/traptic/status/1410946367091060739. Accessed 28 July 2022.
Trimble, Scott. 2017. 2017. Syracuse.com, The Post-Standard. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4XLZEI154U. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2005. Friction: An ethnography of global connection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt. 2012. On nonscalability: The living world is not amenable to precision-nested scales. Common Knowledge 18: 505–524. https://doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-1630424.
Vik, Jostein, Egil Petter Stræte, Bjørn Gunnar. Hansen, and Torfinn Nærland. 2019. The political robot—The structural consequences of automated milking systems (AMS) in Norway. NJAS: Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences 90–91: 100305. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.njas.2019.100305.
Vincent, James. 2022. John Deere’s self-driving tractor lets farmers leave the cab—and the field. The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/4/22866699/john-deere-autonomous-farming-ai-machine-vision-kit. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Visser, Oane, Sarah Ruth Sippel, and Louis Thiemann. 2021. Imprecision farming? Examining the (in)accuracy and risks of digital agriculture. Journal of Rural Studies 86: 623–632. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.07.024.
Warner, Keith Douglass. 2008. Agroecology as participatory science: Emerging alternatives to technology transfer extension practice. Science, Technology, & Human Values 33: 754–777. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243907309851.
Weary, D.M., M.A.G. von Keyserlingk, D.M. Weary, and M.A.G. von Keyserlingk. 2017. Public concerns about dairy-cow welfare: How should the industry respond? Animal Production Science 57: 1201–1209. https://doi.org/10.1071/AN16680.
Whyte, Kyle Powys, Joseph P. Brewer, and Jay T. Johnson. 2016. Weaving Indigenous science, protocols and sustainability science. Sustainability Science 11: 25–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-015-0296-6.
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. 2022. Robotic milking. Hickory Corners, MI: Michigan State University. https://farm.kbs.msu.edu/pdc/robotic-milking/. Accessed 26 July 2022.
Woodie, Alex. 2022. John Deere brings autonomous driving to farm tractors. EnterpriseAI. https://www.enterpriseai.news/2022/01/05/john-deere-bringing-autonomous-driving-to-farm-tractors/. Accessed 27 July 2022.
Zapata, Lupe. 2021. Texas dairy uses unique robotics to milk their cows. Spectrum News 1, August 26. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas-el-paso/news/2021/08/25/texas-dairy-uses-unique-robotics-. Accessed 27 July 2022.
van Zonneveld, Maarten, Marie-Soleil. Turmel, and Jon Hellin. 2020. Decision-making to diversify farm systems for climate change adaptation. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.00032.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the members of the STS Food and Agriculture Network for feedback on an early draft, Erik Nicholson for comments on a later draft, and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments during peer review. We also thank Kelly Bronson, Karly Burch, Mascha Gugganing, and Julie Guthman for organizing and guest editing this special issue.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors have no competing interests or funding to report.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Baur, P., Iles, A. Inserting machines, displacing people: how automation imaginaries for agriculture promise ‘liberation’ from the industrialized farm. Agric Hum Values 40, 815–833 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10435-5
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10435-5