One of the key challenges for agriculture today is feeding an increasing population without contributing to climate change. Increasingly, digital agriculture is discussed as a new sociotechnical regime that could help limit emissions for farmers worldwide. While sustainability is an important issue, recent papers in the field of digital agriculture do not address the problem directly. After a literature review, this paper will focus on the importance of shared perspectives as enablers in socio-technical transitions. This paper argues that the myth of the digital sublime could act in favour of the existing and unsustainable model of agriculture. This is partly a result of hardware production and connectivity already being resource-intensive. Precisely because of this high environmental impact, the following discussion will employ the legacy of the Green Revolution to highlight the importance of precaution in deploying digital agriculture. In theory, in order to address the shortcomings of the current system, private sector companies are developing proprietary software solutions that could in practice entrench unsustainable business models. As an alternative, this paper suggests, existing open-source platforms that encourage not-for-profit collaborations between farmers should be scaled up. Through bottom-up processes, future researchers and developers should seek ways to place sustainability at the centre of their analyses, and encourage the adoption of practices that can be tailored to the diverse needs of farmers. Ultimately, stakeholders in digital agriculture should understand that sustainability principles must be encoded at all stages in the deployment of digital agriculture technologies.
L’Agriculture de Conservation est un système s’inscrivant dans la démarche de l’agroécologie, fondé sur le non-labour, la couverture permanente du sol par des végétaux et des rotations longues et diversifiées. Le système vise à améliorer la productivité sur le long...
New plant breeding technologies (NPBTs), including genetically modified and gene-edited crops, offer large potentials for sustainable agricultural development and food security while addressing shortcomings of the Green Revolution. This article reviews potentials, risks, and actually observed impacts of NPBTs. Regulatory...
De nombreux agriculteurs africains pratiquent des formes d'agriculture potentiellement qualifiables de "?biologiques?". Pourtant, la capacité de l'agriculture biologique à répondre aux enjeux de la sécurité alimentaire en Afrique est encore mal connue, car il existe peu de références expérimentales disponibles...
Background
Smallholder farmers in developing countries are particularly vulnerable to climate shocks but often lack access to agricultural insurance. Weather index insurance (WII) could reduce some of the problems associated with traditional, indemnity-based insurance programs, but uptake has been lower...
Weather risk is a serious issue in the African small farm sector that will further increase due to climate change. Farmers typically react by using low amounts of agricultural inputs. Low input use can help to minimize financial loss in...