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Who’s Running the Farm? How a Sample of Kansas Farmers View Their Usage of Agricultural Operating Systems
Knapic, Reece
Knapic, Reece
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Abstract
The rise of precision agriculture has meant rapidly digitized farming with implications for on-farm decision-making. Part of the digitization is happening through corporate-managed decision support systems (DSS), which seeks to aid farmers in their on-farm decision-making by providing farms with access to data and means to automate their farm equipment. The usage of this software raises some questions: Do farmers who use DSS view its use as beneficial? Do they have reservations about its use? Do they feel that the software may make decisions on their behalf?This project focuses on the experiences of Kansas farmers who utilize John Deere’s DSS and utilizes interviews about their interactions with the software and how it affects their decision-making and sense of agency. A framework of analogical symmetry allows for the analysis of relationships between a user and a digital platform to assess decision-making capacity and agency in the context of Kansas agriculture. This study finds that the farmers interviewed did not view John Deere’s DSS as impacting their decision-making. Instead, the DSS is a tool the farmer uses for decision-making. However, some farmers indicated concerns with agency. However, DSS represents a way that farmers can be locked in to certain decision paths, and DSS opens a door for more corporate involvement in the practice of agriculture. Corporate involvement in agriculture can intensify pressures of farm expansion and consolidation.
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2022-08-31
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University of Kansas
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Keywords
Geography, Sociology, Agriculture, agency, decision-making, local knowledge, precision agriculture