Perceptions of the Fourth Agricultural Revolution: What’s In, What’s Out, and What Consequences are Anticipated?

Abstract

Technological advancement is seen as one way of sustainably intensifying agriculture. Scholars argue that innovation needs to be responsible, but it is difficult to anticipate the consequences of the 'fourth agricultural revolution' without a clear sense of which technologies are included and excluded. The major aims of this article were to investigate which technologies are being associated with the fourth agricultural revolution, as well as to understand how this revolution is being perceived, whether positive or negative consequences are given equal attention, and what type of impacts are anticipated. To this end, we undertook a content analysis of UK media and policy documents alongside interviews of farmers and advisers. We found that the fourth agricultural revolution is associated with emergent, game-changing technologies, at least in media and policy documents. In these sources, the benefits to productivity and the environment were prioritised with less attention to social consequences, but impacts were overwhelmingly presented positively. Farmers and advisers experienced many benefits of technologies and some predicted higher-tech futures. It was clear, however, that technologies create a number of negative consequences. We reflect on these findings and provide advice to policy-makers about how to interrogate the benefits, opportunities, and risks afforded by agricultural technologies.

Extension and Advisory Organizations on the Road to the Digitalization of Animal Farming: An Organizational Learning Perspective

“…However, we know that albeit these organizations, especially public ones, may find it hard to follow external changes and to meet new requirements [74], they undertake attempts to follow the external environment [40,101,102]. On the other hand, individual advisors seem to realize that digitalization has the potential to shape a different future for agriculture [103]. However, as we noted earlier, individual perceptions are not enough to explain organizations' change pathways.…”

The future(s) of digital agriculture and sustainable food systems: An analysis of high-level policy documents

“…Such imaginings and hopes are thus key drivers of directionality in the broader innovation systems that support (or conversely, do not support) transformative change towards sustainable future food systems (Hekkert et al, 2020;Klerkx and Rose, 2020;Pigford et al, 2018;Klerkx and Begemann, 2020). The important performative role of frames and imaginings by agri-food tech companies, farmers and their advisors, and in farming and food media outlets has already been noted for several so-called Agriculture 4.0 technologies such as digital agriculture, vertical farming, gene editing and cellular agriculture (Chiles, 2013;Mouat et al, 2019;Kuch et al, 2020;Barrett and Rose, 2020;Broad, 2019;Broad, 2020a;Broad, 2020b;Klerkx and Rose, 2020;Clapp and Ruder, 2020). These authors note that such frames and imaginings are often about raising positive expectations and hype and display what has been called 'agri-food tech solutionism' (Fairbairn and Guthman, 2020), but may downplay negative social, environmental, economic, health, nutrition, and food justice effects and overestimate agricultural viability and feasibility of these Agriculture 4.0 technologies.…”

Democratizing ownership and participation in the 4th Industrial Revolution: challenges and opportunities in cellular agriculture

“…Trailblazing work on digitalization and agri-food systems has been done by Wolf and Wood ( 1997 ), Kloppenburg ( 2010 , 2014 ), Carolan ( 2015 , 2017a , b , 2018 ), Schneider et al ( 2017 ), and others, but the political economy of agriculture as a whole has been slow to recognize the profoundly disruptive potential of the 4IR. The transformative impact of the 4IR on global agri-food systems is now virtually impossible to ignore, and interest in this area has grown significantly in just the past two years (see Rotz et al 2019a , b ; Bowen and Morris 2019 ; Burton 2019 ; McMichael 2020 ; Broad 2020b ; Barrett and Rose 2020 ; Carolan 2020b ; Clapp and Ruder 2020 ; Comi 2020 ; Fraser 2020 ; Hansen et al 2020 ; Marshall et al 2020 ; Oncini et al 2020 ; Rose et al 2021 ). In the digital platform era, optimizing efficiencies through horizontal/vertical integration and supply-side economies of scale (e.g.…”