Sebastian Prost, City St. George’s University of London

Abstract:

Digital technologies in agriculture are typically portrayed as enabling more sustainable production while increasing productivity. Yet, commercial solutions rarely address the root causes of unsustainable farming, preventing more radical solutions such as agroecology taking root. In this talk, I will present findings from fieldwork with 11 small-scale agroecological farms investigating their adoption of digital technologies. Far from being anti-technological, colleagues and I found instead that current digital tools poorly support farmers’ work with nature. Further, the collaborative nature of agroecological farming, market productivity pressures, and regulatory requirements necessitate complex data practices for coordination, planning, monitoring, and learning. These data practices require labour that is often hidden and causes tension within farms. Based on these insights, I will present guiding principles for designing digital technologies appropriate for agroecology and suggest concrete design opportunities. More broadly, I present a call to reimage digital agriculture beyond capitalism and work with existing farmer-led grassroots networks towards technological sovereignty.

Bio:

Sebastian is a Lecturer at the Centre for HCI Design at City St George’s, University of London, working in the intersection of food and technology, where they esplore responsible socio-digital innovations with local food networks and smallholder farms. They are interested in questions of sustainability, social justice, more-than-human design, and building long-term community relationships through participatory design.

(In cooperation with ITU’s Center for Climate IT)