*Surveillance agriculture and peasant autonomy**
*
Glenn Davis Stone
First published: 05 January 2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12470
Abstract
‘Big Data’ digital technologies are beginning to make inroads into
peasant agriculture in the Global South. Of particular importance is the
subset of technologies that appropriate agricultural decision-making,
here theorized as surveillance agriculture. These technological regimes
aspire to not only remove decision-making from the farmer, but
eventually to replace the farmer with, for instance, ‘autonomous’
tractors. This paper looks ahead to ask what a technological trajectory
that aspires to autonomy for the tractor may portend for autonomy for
the peasant farmer. It compares surveillance agriculture to other forms
of surveillance capitalism, noting that it shares a will to not only
sell products and services but to manipulate behaviour but differs in
that the behaviour being manipulated is professional productive
behaviour. The paper surveys the vested interests of the entities behind
surveillance agriculture and asks how informational relations of
production may be changed between farmers and these entities. It then
examines the informational relations of production among peasant farmers
that may be interdicted by surveillance agriculture, especially the
group-level decision-making dynamics that make ‘individual autonomy’ a
misnomer. But surveillance agriculture is resolutely individualized,
which raises concerns for peasant decision-making autonomy.
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