Continued population growth and land intensification put increasing pressure on agricultural production and point to a need for a 'step change' in agriculture to meet the demand. Advances in digital technology-often encapsulated in the term 'big data'-are increasingly assumed to be the way this challenge will be met. For this to be achieved, it is necessary to understand the ways that farmers and other industry stakeholders perceive big data and how big data might change the industry. It is also necessary to address emerging moral and ethical questions about access, cost, scale and support, which will determine whether farms will be able to be 'big data enabled'. We conducted a discourse analysis of 26 interviews with stakeholders in the grains industry in Australia. Two main discourses were identified: (1) big data as a technology that will significantly benefit a few larger farms or businesses-Big Data is for Big Farming-and conversely (2) big data as a way for every farmer to benefit-Big Data is for Everyone. We relate these findings and the literature on adoption of technology and social studies in agriculture to the potential of farmers to embrace big data, from basic concerns about network infrastructure through to more complex issues of data collection and storage. The study highlights that there are key questions and issues that need to be addressed in further development of digital technology and big data in agriculture, specifically around trust, equity, distribution of benefits and access. This is the first study of big data in agriculture that takes a discourse analysis approach and thus interrogates the status quo and the prevailing norms and values driving decisions with impacts on both farmers and wider society.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

A theoretical basis is required for comparing key features and critical elements in wild fisheries and aquaculture supply chains under a changing climate. Here we develop a new quantitative metric that is analogous to indices used to analyse food-webs and identify key species. The Supply Chain Index (SCI) identifies critical elements as those elements with large throughput rates, as well as greater connectivity. The sum of the scores for a supply chain provides a single metric that roughly captures both the resilience and connectedness of a supply chain. Standardised scores can facilitate cross-comparisons both under current conditions as well as under a changing climate. Identification of key elements along the supply chain may assist in informing adaptation strategies to reduce anticipated future risks posed by climate change. The SCI also provides information on the relative stability of different supply chains based on whether there is a fairly even spread in the individual scores of the top few key elements, compared with a more critical dependence on a few key individual supply chain elements. We use as a case study the Australian southern rock lobster Jasus edwardsii fishery, which is challenged by a number of climate change drivers such as impacts on recruitment and growth due to changes in large-scale and local oceanographic features. The SCI identifies airports, processors and Chinese consumers as the key elements in the lobster supply chain that merit attention to enhance stability and potentially enable growth. We also apply the index to an additional four real-world Australian commercial fishery and two aquaculture industry supply chains to highlight the utility of a systematic method for describing supply chains. Overall, our simple methodological approach to empirically-based supply chain research provides an objective method for comparing the resilience of supply chains and highlighting components that may be critical.