Doctoral Dissertation Research: Small-Scale Farming, Agricultural Technology, and Environmental Change

How do smallholder farmers approach novel digital agricultural technologies in the context of environmental change? In response to technologies ill-suited for small-scale, sustainable agriculture and the corporate consolidation of agricultural production, emerging networks of farmers, agronomists, engineers, and government actors are challenging the presumed superiority of industrial agricultural regimes through local innovation.

Farmers are collaborating with university agronomists and government researchers to develop locally appropriate digital hardware and software, such as low-cost soil reflectometers and open-source farm management software, to bolster agroecological practices. This project analyzes how an emerging network of farmers and agrarian stakeholders seek to repurpose digital technology innovation as a grassroots endeavor to address their social, ecological, and economic goals.

The project trains a graduate student in methods of scientific data collection and analysis and builds capacity for the future conduct of scientific research in this setting. The findings of this doctoral research project are shared with a wide range of stakeholders, to improve the public’s understanding of science and the scientific method.

This research explores more socially accountable and ecologically oriented forms of innovation emerging from grassroots alliances that center small-scale farmers and agricultural communities. As a range of stakeholders compete to make claims about the value of agricultural technologies and the future of agri-food systems, the researcher asks what kinds of agricultural relations and futures are being imagined and created through grassroots technology innovation between farmers, agronomists, engineers, activists, and government actors, particularly in the context of changing climate conditions; and how small-scale farmers participate in and draw on multi-stakeholder alliances to generate new technologies.

The research takes place at a site where extreme weather events, increasing temperatures, and loss of groundwater shape conditions for grassroots responses to food system challenges, and where local technology innovation intersects with agroecology and grassroots mobilization. Twelve months of fieldwork is being conducted at multiple sites where the researcher engages a range of actors, including farmers, agronomists, engineers, and government actors.

Methods include participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and event ethnography. The findings of this research advances basic science within the fields of the anthropology of agriculture, digitalization, and socioenvironmental systems.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.