“In agriculture 1+1 does not equal 2”: Re-configurations and frictions around the implementation of the Digital Farm Book

Drawing on insights from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Feminist Political Ecology (FPE), this qualitative study emphasises the importance of integrating everyday and embodied dimensions to understand agriculture’s digitalisation. We explore reactions and dynamics around the implementation of a Digital Farm Book (DFB) in Spain as a key practice of the turn to “farming by numbers”, an agribiopolitical regime that aims at managing agriculture as a calculable environment. We do so by paying special attention to farmers’ embodied knowledge and their diverse forms of collecting, interpreting, or questioning data as well as changes in everyday practices and relations at the farm. We found that the DFB brings several re-arrangements which farming actors find challenging. We organize these “frictions” around three main aspects: the depreciation of sensorial, tacit, and experiential knowledge; the shifting roles and new practices favouring particular agrarian structures; and the contested conceptions around environmental sustainability. Yet, farmers and technicians do not fully reject the digital tools, nor data collection or data-driven knowledge. It is mostly the rigidity and standardization of the DFB that makes its adoption and integration challenging. In turn, we show how farming actors’ multiple knowledges around farming and data enrich our understanding of agricultural systems and highlight in the limits and challenges of agriculture’s digitalisation. • We explore reactions around the implementation of a Digital Farm Book (DFB) in Spain. • DFB brings re-arrangements in knowledge, expertise and daily practices at the farm. • DFB changes conceptions of environmental sustainability. • These re-arrangements create frictions among farming actors and the state. • Critical questions on the intersection of sustainability and digitalization arise.