Elsevier

Journal of Rural Studies

Volume 55, October 2017, Pages 193-202
Journal of Rural Studies

Ordering adoption: Materiality, knowledge and farmer engagement with precision agriculture technologies

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.08.011Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Materiality is a constitutive element in how farmers come to know and engage with technology.

  • A focus on ordering enables recognition of how materially heterogeneous processes intertwine with farming knowledge.

  • Commercial-technological and biophysical modes of ordering impose constraints on precision agriculture (PA) implementation.

  • Growers engage in alternative ordering practices, referred to as tinkering, to work with, and around, these constraints.

  • Tinkering enables growers to take advantage of PA in a way that is flexible and accords with their farming circumstances.

Abstract

In their efforts to understand why and how farmers adopt new technologies, techniques and programmes, rural sociologists and geographers have typically focused on the social and cultural relations in which farming knowledge and practices are embedded. However, limited scholarly attention has been given to the important ways in which materials and materiality are a constitutive element in how farmers come to know and engage with technology. This paper addresses this issue through the application of theoretical work on ordering, which focuses on the materially heterogeneous processes and implicit strategies that hold together and perform particular social and organisational arrangements. Drawing upon qualitative data from a research project on adoption of precision agriculture (PA) in the Australian rice industry, we identify two principal modes of ordering: (1) commercial-technological, in which lack of compatibility between technologies produced by different machinery manufacturers creates challenges for farmers in integrating and adapting PA to existing farming practices and systems; and (2) biophysical, where drought and low water allocations create uncertainty and a reluctance by farmers to make large capital outlays for PA technology. While these modes of ordering constrain rice growers’ capacities to adopt PA technology, we argue that growers also engage in their own alternative ordering practices to negotiate, work with, and work around these constraints. We refer to this work as tinkering and argue that it is a powerful, yet little recognised, form of ordering enabling growers to take advantage of the material benefits of PA in a way that is flexible, adaptable, and fits their immediate farming circumstances. In concluding, we contend that an ordering approach provides a fruitful way forward in recognising the more-than-cultural dimensions through which farmers engage with technology, and particularly the complex ways in which materiality intertwines with, shapes, and is shaped by, farming knowledge and practices.

Introduction

Rural sociologists and geographers have long argued that farmers' knowledge, and the broader social and cultural relations in which such knowledge is embedded, is crucial to understanding farmer engagement with and adoption of new programmes, techniques and technologies (e.g., Clark and Murdoch, 1997, Morris, 2006, Oliver et al., 2012, Riley, 2008, Warren et al., 2016). This ‘socio-cultural’ approach to knowledge has generated significant insights into making sense of why farmers might partially adopt or not adopt at all. It has also drawn attention to farming knowledge as a relational achievement; that is how farmers' tacit, experiential knowledge relates to and is integrated with other forms of knowledge (such as ‘scientific’ knowledge), and the consequences of these relations for programmes or initiatives seeking to change farming practices. However, in focusing primarily on the social and cultural relations that underpin farming knowledge, limited attention is given to ‘knowledge in action’ (Bruckmeier and Tovey, 2008, p. 321), that is, the ways in which knowledge, and the practices associated with the application of that knowledge, are a co-production of social and material products (Jasanoff, 2004). This paper addresses this issue by investigating the significance of materiality in how farmers understand and engage with technology.

Materials – which include human craftwork, texts, machines, markets, plant matter and animals – are a constitutive element of how farmers come to ‘know’ and engage with new technologies and techniques (Higgins, 2006, Legun, 2015, Singleton, 2010). However, their significance in the context of research on farmer adoption is yet to be explored systematically. According to Law (1992, p. 381), studying how these materials are organised and ‘come to be patterned to generate effects like organizations, inequality, and power’ is an important task for social scientists. Such a task involves identifying and examining the relations between different ‘modes of ordering’ – the combination of socio-materially heterogeneous processes and implicit strategies that give rise to particular social and organizational arrangements (Law, 1994, Mol and Law, 2002). An analytical emphasis on socio-material ordering, which we apply in this paper, builds on growing engagement with a relational approach in agi-food studies, which is characterised by attention to ‘how materialities, practices and discourses matter in terms of their effects and affectivities’ (Carolan, 2017, p. 136).

Drawing from a qualitative study of technology adoption in the Australian rice industry, this article investigates the modes of ordering that influence how growers come to know and engage with precision agriculture (PA). Broadly, PA refers to a range of techniques – such as yield monitoring and mapping, remote sensing, and variable rate technology – that utilise technologies including Global Positioning Systems and Geographic Information Systems. As a suite of technologies, PA is argued to contribute ‘to the long-term sustainability of production agriculture’ through more targeted and strategic use of inputs that ‘reduce losses from excess applications and from reduction of losses’ due to nutrient imbalances, weed escapes and insect damage (Bongiovanni and Lowenberg-DeBoer, 2004, p. 383). An ordering approach draws attention to the heterogeneous sets of relations and implicit strategies through which PA is enacted, without assuming that these relations are necessarily ‘social’ or ‘cultural’. It also provides broader insights into the variously enabling and constraining effects engendered by these sets of relations. Based on our analysis, we identify two principal modes of ordering PA: commercial-technological and biophysical. We argue that while these forms of ordering have a generally constraining effect on rice growers' understanding of how PA can work for them, and their capacities to implement PA on-farm, growers also engage in their own alternative ordering practices – which we refer to as tinkering – to negotiate, work with, and work around these constraints. Tinkering is partly a consequence of the material constraints imposed by commercial-technological and biophysical modes of ordering. However, it is also a practical strategy for growers in caring for their farm as an economic and social unit (Krzywoszynska, 2016), which enables them to take advantage of the material benefits of PA in a way that is flexible and fits their immediate farming circumstances.

Section snippets

Mapping a socio-cultural approach: from values and motivations to ‘knowledge-cultures’

While social science research on farm-level adoption is diverse, it is broadly united in taking a ‘socio-cultural’ approach – the recognition that social and cultural relations are fundamental to understanding farmer responses to new programmes, techniques or technologies. This literature can be divided into two related areas of focus: farmers' values and motivations, and the relationship between farmers' tacit knowledge and scientific knowledge. These are outlined briefly below.

Rural social

Ordering, farming knowledge, and technology adoption

According to Law (1994), ordering comprises three important analytical dimensions that make it different from the traditional sociological emphasis on social order. First, ordering recognises that ‘orders are never complete’ and that they ‘are more or less precarious and partial accomplishments’ (pp. 1–2). Second, processes of ordering are plural, co-existing with one another. This means there is no such thing as a singular or root order through which the social world can be explained. Third,

Context and methods

This article focuses on the Australian rice industry, which is located in the Murrumbidgee and Murray valleys in Southern New South Wales (NSW). Specifically, the irrigation districts of Murrumbidgee (MIA), Coleambally (CIA) and Murray are situated within this area (see Map 1). These districts are characterised by hot summers and cool winters. There are approximately 1500 farms across these regions, which are collectively capable of producing in the vicinity of one million tonnes of rice each

Commercial-technological ordering

Growing dependence by farmers on the consumption of inputs promoted by corporate agribusiness is well documented in the agri-food studies literature (e.g., Almås and Lawrence, 2003, Magdoff et al., 2000, Wolf and Wood, 1997). This literature is largely informed by a political economy perspective, which conceptualises the profit-making interests of agribusiness firms as crucial in contributing to the commodification of field-level information and farming knowledge (Wolf and Wood, 1997). Similar

Conclusion

In using ordering as an analytical framework, this paper has highlighted first and foremost the multiple ways in which material relations are significant in shaping how farmers engage with technology. Our focus on materiality provides an important contribution to the existing literature – underpinned by a socio-cultural approach to farming knowledge – where farmer engagement with new technologies, practices and programmes is viewed primarily as a consequence of social and cultural relations

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the rice industry stakeholders and growers who participated in the research for this paper. We would also like to thank the three anonymous reviewers who provided helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.

Funding

The research reported in this paper was supported by the Australian Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation [Grant number: PRJ-009181].

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