Technology and Place Connection

Can you hear me now?: Stakeholder perspectives on the digital transformation of agriculture

• PI: Zach Hurst, Co-PI: J.D. Wulfhorst
• This research project will engage stakeholders and researchers in a dialogue regarding their perspectives on research outcomes associated with their rural social-ecological systems. This information will guide discussions to focus on social learning and collaborative development of research agendas. This approach will generate the depth of engagement needed to inform LTAR research plans, and provide a base of information that will contribute to such efforts. The research goal includes engagement of a research process that can investigate the limitations of understanding and identified research needs responsive to stakeholder needs, with particular emphasis looking forward to the integration of digital agriculture. The research outcomes will describe the way in which different stakeholder types understand the role of digital technology and the extent to which they see its integration as important for achieving sustainable intensification.

Capturing markets, freeing producers? Ecosystem services and digital agriculture

• PI: Zach Hurst; co-PI: Aly Bean, J.D. Wulfhorst
• This research project will quantify the breadth of values producers place on the landscape, the adoption and way that producers use digital agricultural technologies, and/or the potential for payment for ecosystem services markets. Data collection will employ the options of either a mail or digital survey method to evaluate for feasibility. This survey will elaborate themes that emerge from the qualitative interviews with rural residents as outlined in “Understanding technologies’ impacts on place connections through the life course” and so particular focus of the questionnaire will remain emergent. One outcome of the project will evaluate the potential for ecosystem service markets that engage with digital technology and the extent to which these would achieve sustainability outcomes.

Growing landscape values? data-based agriculture and its impacts on producers’ places

• PI: Zach Hurst; co-PIs: Claire Friedrichsen, Gwendŵr Meredith, J.D. Wulfhorst
• This research project will involve a qualitative approach to understand some of the potential impacts of data-based or digital agriculture on the relationships that people have with the place of adoption for these technologies. We will use a Life Course Theory-based approach, to provide a structure for the development of interview questions that seek to understand the way in which people attach to and identify with their rural places and how this formation occurs. The role of technology in altering this attachment and identity formation is one focus of the inquiry. The sample will include a range of rural residents who involved with the food system in different ways, with sampling biased towards producers. This research will capture the thoughts of rural residents prior to the transformational changes likely to occur with digital technology integration into agricultural communities.