Big Data in Agri-Food by Kelly Bronson
Ecosystem Services , 2020
Ecosystem services delivery is influenced by food systems and vice versa. As the application of d... more Ecosystem services delivery is influenced by food systems and vice versa. As the application of digital technologies in agriculture continues to expand, digital technologies might affect the delivery of ecosystem services in view of the sorts of food systems in which they are embedded. The direction food systems develop towards the future, and the role digital technologies play in this development, is influenced by imaginings, hopes and visions about what these technologies mean for future food systems. In this article, we investigate what roles are being imagined for these technologies by international actors with the ability to influence the future of food systems. We analyze outward-facing policy documents as well as conference proceedings on digital agriculture produced by the World Bank, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Using qualitative textual analysis, we show that these organisations envision future food systems that prioritize maximizing food output through technology. We illustrate how this vision reflects a long-standing narrative about the role of technology in food systems innovation, which makes the controversial assumption that increases in food production lead to improvements in food security. Based on this finding, we suggest that evaluations of how digital agricultural technologies might affect the delivery of ecosystem services must begin by considering what visions of future food systems are take into account in science, technology development and policy making. Supporting similar research on high-level narratives surrounding agroecology and climate smart agriculture, we find that the dominant narrative in our dataset supports the status quo global, industrial agriculture and food system. This system continues to be criticized by many scholars for its environmental impacts. Based on our findings, we suggest that ecosystems service researchers could contribute substantially to the evaluation of environmental impacts of digital agriculture by analyzing the impact digital agriculture may have on the trade-offs between provisioning, regulatory, and cultural ecosystem services for several different food system futures. Such analyses can feed into processes of responsible innovation.
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Canadian Journal of Communication , 2019
Policy discussions have raised concerns about how big data are used and who has knowledge about t... more Policy discussions have raised concerns about how big data are used and who has knowledge about the ways in which they are used. These discussions, however, have largely ignored the role that digitization plays in agriculture. Consequently, the digitization of agriculture is unfolding with very little regulatory intervention. Drawing on ongoing research, this article argues that this omission may be critical, and suggests how it can be considered in current policy endeavours. résumé Jusqu'à présent, les discussions sur les politiques ont porté sur comment on utilise les mégadonnées et sur qui détient le savoir sur comment on les utilise. Ces discussions, cependant, ont généralement ignoré le rôle de la numérisation en agriculture. En conséquence, la numérisation de l'agriculture se déroule avec très peu de suivis réglementaires. Cet article se fonde sur des recherches en cours pour soutenir que cette omission pourrait s'avérer critique et suggère comment des initiatives actuelles en matière de politique pourraient remédier à la situation.
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Wageningen Journal of Life Sciences, 2019
This article extends social science research on big data and data platforms through a focus on ag... more This article extends social science research on big data and data platforms through a focus on agriculture, which has received relatively less attention than other sectors like health. In this paper, I use a responsible innovation framework to move attention to the social and ethical dimensions of big data “upstream,” to decision-making in the very selection of agricultural data and the building of its infrastructures. I draw on original empirical material from qualitative interviews with North American designers and engineers to make visible and analyze the normative aspects of their technical decisions. Social actors shaping innovation hold a narrow set of values about good farming and good technology and their data selection choices privilege large-scale and commodity crop farmers by focusing on agronomic crop data and data mapping unusable to organic growers. Enabling engagement among a wide variety of food system actors, not just already powerful ones, and attending to a greater diversity of values would be essential to underpin a responsible digital agricultural transition.
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Big Data and Society, 2018
Glossary Big data Voluminous data gathered by unconventional sources into computer-stored and min... more Glossary Big data Voluminous data gathered by unconventional sources into computer-stored and mined datasets. Machine intelligence Sophisticated computation capable of analyzing and learning independent of humans. Citizen science Scientific data gathered by non-scientists. The original citizen science project was the annual bird count, made by thousands of bird enthusiasts and used to track the population of migratory birds. Industrial agriculture Large-scale agricultural production of single commodity crops for export market. This mode of production is capital and input intensive. Abstract Agriculture is currently undergoing a digital revolution. Technological innovations in big data and machine intelligence applied to food production are being developed and adopted in order to optimize both business as well as environmental efficiency. While some actors think the digitization of agriculture can help humanity address the " wicked " problem of twinned food insecurity and sustainability challenges, others are more skeptical and are weary in particular that the digitization of agriculture presents socio-ethical implications. This entry first describes some of the digital artifacts currently in use in food systems around the world and categorizes them into types for the reader. The entry then details hope that agricultural digitization can help meet food security and sustainability challenges before presenting some of the critiques.
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Technology Innovation Management Review
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Our essay invites food scholars to consider how the recent technological developments are making ... more Our essay invites food scholars to consider how the recent technological developments are making big data increasingly relevant to our field. We offer an overview of the how big data and related crowdsourcing of information are penetrating the production and marketing of food, and reflect on what are potentially key ethical and epistemological questions that link big data with issues of sustainability and social justice in food systems. Our aim is to initiate a more deliberate dialogue between data scholars and food scholars to more comprehensively assess contemporary agri-food environments.
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Farming is undergoing a digital revolution. Our existing review of current Big Data applications ... more Farming is undergoing a digital revolution. Our existing review of current Big Data applications in the agri-food sector has revealed several collection and analytics tools that may have implications for relationships of power between players in the food system (e.g. between farmers and large corporations). For example, Who retains ownership of the data generated by applications like Monsanto Corproation’s Weed I.D. ‘‘app’’? Are there privacy implications with the data gathered by John Deere’s precision agricultural equipment? Systematically tracing the digital revolution in agriculture, and charting the affordances as well as the limitations of Big Data applied to food and agriculture, should be a broad research goal for Big Data scholarship. Such a goal brings data scholarship into conversation with food studies and it allows for a focus on the material consequences of big data in society.
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GMOs by Kelly Bronson
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Journal of Responsible Innovation, 2015
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Energy by Kelly Bronson
Science Communication , 2019
It is widely recognized that fracking is a topic of debate in the news, which is largely "compart... more It is widely recognized that fracking is a topic of debate in the news, which is largely "compartmentalized" into stories on fracking as economically beneficial or risky to environment and health. Building on previous scholarship, we take a constructivist position and focus on fracking as potentially technical and social, or sociotechnical. Our qualitative textual analysis of news printed in two high-circulation newspapers in Canada (2013-2015) reveals that normative positions on fracking are furthered alongside normative descriptions of Indigenous Peoples and regional cultures. We argue that science communication practitioners perform specific normative work via their communicative acts. Media representations of hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" are a key site for the coproduction of knowledge on a controversial technology and of politics, or relationships of power and authority in society. It is widely recognized that
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In this paper I examine the New Brunswick Energy Institute's roundtables for their ability to int... more In this paper I examine the New Brunswick Energy Institute's roundtables for their ability to integrate citizen concerns about hydraulic fracturing, those concerns circulating within informal domains (e.g., within activist protest). Drawing on observational and transcription data, I reveal a set of value commitments held by those leading the NBEI, which invisibly defined a limited range of technological choices for roundtable members. These commitments also established energy decisions as the purview of technically trained experts. This study extends scholarly research on public engagements by making visible the possible role of value assumptions and conceptual frameworks in limiting their democratic potential. Résumé Dans le présent document, j'étudie la façon dont les tables rondes de l'Institut de l'énergie du Nouveau-Brunswick (IENB) ont été en mesure d'intégrer les préoccupations de la population à l'égard de la fracturation hydraulique, c'est-à-dire les préoccupations exprimées dans les milieux informels (p. ex. lorsqu'il y a une protestation militante). En m'appuyant sur des données d'observation et de transcription, je révèle un ensemble d'engagements fondés sur des valeurs que prônent les dirigeants de l'IENB, qui ont défini de manière invisible une gamme limitée de choix technologiques pour les membres de la table ronde. Ces engagements sous-entendent aussi que les décisions énergétiques sont du ressort des spécialistes ayant reçu une formation technique. La présente étude approfondit la recherche universitaire sur les engagements publics en rendant transparent le rôle que pourraient jouer les valeurs présumées et les cadres conceptuels dans la limitation de leur potentiel démocratique.
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Reviews by Kelly Bronson
Environmental Impact Assessment Review , 2021
Concepts of justice are implicit to impact assessment (IA) procedures and policies. A closer exam... more Concepts of justice are implicit to impact assessment (IA) procedures and policies. A closer examination of the academic literature on environmental justice reveals plural meanings and practices. We present data from a scoping review of the academic literature on IA guided by a trivalent definition of environmental justice encompassing distribution of environmental harms, recognition of diverse ways of knowing, and representation of plural perspectives through democratic procedures. We use this trivalent framework to assess how justice is defined in English language IA journal articles from 2000 to 2019. Findings show an emphasis on distributive and procedural dimensions of justice, with significantly less attention given to issues of recognition and framing. Broad definitions of environmental justice can assist IA scholars in attending to justice-seeking claims across various IA practices and settings, including implications for how IA addresses the concerns of marginalized groups.
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Science as Culture, 2012
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Topia Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Sep 1, 2008
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Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2014
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Science as Culture
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Big Data in Agri-Food by Kelly Bronson
GMOs by Kelly Bronson
Energy by Kelly Bronson
Reviews by Kelly Bronson
corporatized and industrialized farming and the technology threatens
food sovereignty. A group of organic producers from Saskatchewan,
Canada, has taken Monsanto to court because its GE canola has
contaminated organic fields. An ethnography of case participants points
to an impasse between the dominant framing of GE—within the logic of
science—, versus farmer’s evaluations of the technology—as a set of
knowledge practices that is rearranging social relationships. The case is
exemplary of the need for increased citizen participation in decision making about science and technology, and its participants represent the hope of renewed democracy around wider social justice issues.
commercially available since the early 1990s and they are widely thought to have environmental
and economic benefit; however, adoption studies show uneven adoption among
farmers in the U.S. and Europe. This study aims to tackle a lingering puzzle regarding
why some farmers adopt precision agriculture as an approach to food production and why
others do not. The specific objective of this study is to examine the social and biophysical
determinants of farmers’ adoption of PA. This paper fills a research gap by including measurements
of farmer identity—specifically their own conceptions of their role in the food
system—as well as their perceptions of biophysical risks as these relate to the adoption of
PA among a large sample of Midwestern U.S. farmers. The study has identified that farmer
identity and perceptions of environmental risk do indeed influence PA adoption and that
these considerations ought to be incorporated into further studies of PA adoption in other
jurisdictions. The findings also appear to highlight the social force of policy and industry
efforts to frame PA as not only good for productivity and efficiency but also as an ecologically
beneficial technology.