“It’s no longer the same job”: robotization among breeders and dairy cows

Abstract

In agriculture, mechanization and robotization are two terms that are generally associated with processes characteristic of a “Green Revolution”: industrialization, cost reduction and “rationalization”, increased output and modernization. In this article, I reflect on the relations implied in this evolutionary-style narrative through an ethnography of cattle breeders and dairy cows in Haute-Savoie, France. I will show that the technical transformation engendered by the implementation of a milking robot is, first and foremost, a reconfiguration of the relationships between humans and cows. I will analyse the effects of the milking robot for both humans and cows through the notion of ‘technical objects’ and their associated environment, which configure a transformation in the technical system linked to the process of domestication. I show that modifications in the rhythm, gestures and interactions with the animals also redefine how cows are made to produce milk, and that, furthermore, this does not necessarily constitute a virtualization, an objectification or distancing in relation to the animals. In brief, it lacks many of the defining features of ‘industrialization’.