James E. Addicott - The Precision Farming Revolution: Global Drivers of Local Agricultural Methods

Cover image: James E. Addicott

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Precision farming systems were marketed to local farmers on their ability to increase yields whilst reducing inputs and business overheads to save planet earth and feed the world. But could autonomous, satellite-driven tractors and farm equipment help local family farmers achieve these goals? Critics contend that self-steering and self-regulating farm equipment incorporated throughputs of commoditised data which devalued the time-honoured knowledge accumulated by farming families; autonomous control systems reduced farmers to the role of nodes or conduits within control systems dominated by transnational firms. This book is the result of four years of research conducted at the University of Cambridge, and contains ethnographic research carried out in the West Country of England within a cooperative of farmers in rural village communities. It reveals the reasons why local farmers were investing into autonomous systems and traces any outcomes of adoption. It describes the driving forces in the fourth industrial revolution in the lead up to Britains Brexit referendum, detailing local and global drivers in revolution from the launch of Sputnik 1 , world population growth metrics, climatic and ecological crises, profit-driven farming and government grants. Contrary to the claims that precision farming system came with calculable cost benefits that would stand to profit local farmers around the world, whilst at the same time making industrial farming green, the book analyses precision farming systems as one of a number of cultural methods to be found within Britains multi-agricultural and countryside landscape. Intelligence, ideas and thinking, new organisational powers and capacities, were precisely what precision farming offered farmers and firms. The power dynamics of industrial agriculture were reorganised and this book will offer readers an understanding of how and why.

Gerald & Rosaline Addicott

Dr. Peter Dickens of The Department of Sociology: University of Cambridge

Emily & Eddie, Charlotte and Rosa

The Bath District Farmers Group

Duchy of Cornwall

Night ploughing, though never a very common practice, developed, when necessary, its own special technique. It had to; for, even in daylight, ploughing is a tricky business; you need a clear and confident eye for it. But to plough at night is like a blind man walking a tightrope; shadows deceive you at every turn, you lose your sense of direction, and to control your machine and keep your furrow straight you need the instinct of both owl and acrobat. But experienced ploughmen developed a sixth sense; they got used to ploughing by moonlight, and when there was no moon they worked to a special system of lights; one fixed low on the front on the tractor and screened to light of the furrow, and another a lantern hung in the hedge before them and moved after each cut to give them direction. (Ministry of Information : p. 20)