How will data reshape farming?

New networking infrastructures are being developed to support the collection, communication, and processing of enormous amounts of data on farms. Who will collect and benefit from this data?

  • Will data-driven farming primarily benefit the big players in agribusiness, or will it also create opportunities for small players and rural communities to sustain themselves?
  • How will ubiquitous data collection affect environmental impact of farming? Will it allow for more sustainable footprints, or will it be leveraged for ‘greenwashing’ that makes crops appear more sustainable while doing little to mitigate their actual effects?
  • And how could these insights be used to improve the design of new networking infrastructure, and related policy recommendations?

In this project, we are integrating social-scientific analysis with technical development of cutting-edge farm networking research to understand and improve the societal outcomes of high-bandwidth farm networking. This work is led by Phoebe Sengers, associate professor of Information Science and Science & Technology Studies,  Hakim Weatherspoon, associate professor of Computer Science, and Steven Wolf, associate professor of Natural Resources in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

This project is part of the Cornell Initiative for Digital Agriculture. It is supported by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant 1955125. All opinions expressed are those of the researchers, not CIDA or the NSF.