The distributed farmer: rethinking US Midwestern precision agriculture techniques

ABSTRACT

This article examines changes in the social world of farming, agricultural decision-making, and environmental outcomes in regions where precision agriculture (PA) techniques are increasingly commonplace. I suggest that a PA farmer does not typically appear as a discreet actor but rather as a ‘distributed farmer’: an assemblage of human and material participants which only together enact farming and decisions about farming. Drawing on qualitative data collected from on-site interviews with agronomists and seed sellers working in the US Midwest alongside a rich body of agri-food scholarship, this research posits that PA demonstrates the usefulness of this new theoretical unit for critically examining agricultural practices. Using the Midwestern PA case example, I show that studying relational flows interior to the distributed farmer is a generative way to further the discourse about farmer decision-making. Further, the distributed farmer is shown to be a useful theoretical tool when considering the social relationships between contemporary agricultural techniques and human values of environmental innovations. This article has implications for continued social science scholarship and for applied research supporting transitions to more sustainable and equitable agricultural practices in the US Midwest and many cognate geographies elsewhere in the globe.

KEYWORDS:

• Precision agriculture
• sustainability
• assemblage
• farmers
• US Midwest

Acknowledgements

Earlier versions of this research were presented at the 2018 International Sociological Association World Congress in Toronto, ON, Canada and the 2019 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York, NY. I thank the journal editor, Stewart Lockie, along with the anonymous reviewers whose comments greatly improved the paper. I also thank all those who offered feedback or support related to this research including Paul Stock, Kelly Bronson, Gregory Cushman, Lukas Szrot, Katharine Legun, Hugh Campbell, and Jason Konefal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

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Matt Comi

Matt Comi is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology and an Institute for Policy and Social Research (IPSR) Fellow at the University of Kansas.