Surveillance agriculture and peasant autonomy
Glenn Davis Stone
First published: 05 January 2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12470
Abstract
‘Big Data’ digital technologies are beginning to make inroads into
peasant agriculture in the Global South. Of particular importance is
the subset of technologies that appropriate agricultural
decision-making, here theorized as surveillance agriculture. These
technological regimes aspire to not only remove decision-making from
the farmer, but eventually to replace the farmer with, for instance,
‘autonomous’ tractors. This paper looks ahead to ask what a
technological trajectory that aspires to autonomy for the tractor
may portend for autonomy for the peasant farmer. It compares
surveillance agriculture to other forms of surveillance capitalism,
noting that it shares a will to not only sell products and services
but to manipulate behaviour but differs in that the behaviour being
manipulated is professional productive behaviour. The paper surveys
the vested interests of the entities behind surveillance agriculture
and asks how informational relations of production may be changed
between farmers and these entities. It then examines the
informational relations of production among peasant farmers that may
be interdicted by surveillance agriculture, especially the
group-level decision-making dynamics that make ‘individual autonomy’
a misnomer. But surveillance agriculture is resolutely
individualized, which raises concerns for peasant decision-making
autonomy.
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