Precision agriculture and the future of agrarian labor in the US food system

Ayorinde Ogunyiola (), Ryan Stock () and Maaz Gardezi ()
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Ayorinde Ogunyiola: Murray State University
Ryan Stock: Northern Michigan University
Maaz Gardezi: Virginia Tech

Agriculture and Human Values, 2025, vol. 42, issue 1, No 25, 383-403

Abstract: Abstract Precision Agriculture (PA) uses sensors, drones, and machine learning algorithms to provide farmers with site-specific information for targeted farm management decisions. These technological systems can reconfigure farm labor, replacing or displacing agrarian workers, especially unskilled, seasonal, hired, and migrant labor. Therefore, PA raises critical social questions that have implications for farmers’ autonomy and control over agrarian production systems. We critically examine the social consequences of PA through the theoretical lenses of accumulation by dispossession and the agrarian question of labor. We use data from six focus group discussions conducted during the Fall of 2019 in heterogeneous production systems in South Dakota and Vermont. We assert that agritech firms design PA technologies as accumulation strategies predicated on the dispossession of farmers’ autonomy and control over agrarian production systems. As such, PA is fundamentally reconfiguring the future of agrarian labor in the US food system.

Keywords: Precision agriculture; Accumulation by dispossession; Agrarian labor; Agrarian question of labor (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s10460-024-10615-x

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