Perceptions of high-tech controlled environment agriculture among local food consumers: using interviews to explore sense-making and connections to good food
Perceptions of high-tech controlled environment agriculture among local food consumers: using interviews to explore sense-making and connections to good food
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DOI：
10.1007/s10460-021-10261-7
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发表时间：
2021-08-25
影响因子：
4.5
通讯作者：
Ezzeddine, Maya
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Broad, Garrett M.;Marschall, Wythe;Ezzeddine, Maya
近年来，高科技控制环境农业（CEA）的新形式受到越来越多的关注和投资。这些系统集成了一套技术-包括自动化、LED照明、垂直植物堆叠和水培施肥-以在封闭的生长环境中更好地控制温度、湿度、二氧化碳、氧气和光线。支持者坚持认为，CEA可以生产可持续的，营养的，美味的当地食品，特别是为未来的城市。与此同时，各种批评者提出了对环境影响和能源使用，高启动成本和消费者可及性挑战等问题的担忧。然而，在现阶段，相对较少的研究探讨了实际的消费者知识和态度有关的CEA的过程和产品。本文在意义建构理论的指导下，通过对纽约市当地食品消费者的结构化访谈，考察人们对高科技CEA的认知和看法。从那里，它探讨了CEA在多大程度上符合消费者对“好食物”的概念化。“主要调查结果强调，公众对CEA的理解仍然存在重大差距，CEA产品的成功将取决于该行业履行其环境承诺的能力，并且需要减轻对CEA“非自然”方面的担忧。鉴于目前高科技CEA产品的价格溢价，该行业的扩张将在很大程度上取决于其说服以价值为导向的食品消费者的能力，即产品符合经济，社会和环境可持续性目标的三重底线。
In recent years, new forms of high-tech controlled environment agriculture (CEA) have received increased attention and investment. These systems integrate a suite of technologies - including automation, LED lighting, vertical plant stacking, and hydroponic fertilization - to allow for greater control of temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide, oxygen, and light in an enclosed growing environment. Proponents insist that CEA can produce sustainable, nutritious, and tasty local food, particularly for the cities of the future. At the same time, a variety of critics raise concerns about its environmental impacts and energy use, high startup costs, and consumer accessibility challenges, among other issues. At this stage, however, relatively little research has explored actual consumer knowledge and attitudes related to CEA processes and products. Guided by theories of sense-making, this article draws from structured interviews with local food consumers in New York City to examine what people know and think about high-tech CEA. From there, it explores the extent to which CEA fits into consumer conceptualizations of what makes for "good food." Key findings emphasize that significant gaps in public understanding of CEA remain, that CEA products' success will depend on the ability of the industry to deliver on its environmental promises, and that concerns about "unnatural" aspects of CEA will need to be allayed. Given the price premium at which high-tech CEA products are currently sold, the industry's expansion will depend in large part on its ability to convince value-oriented food consumers that the products meet the triple-bottom-line of economic, social, and environmental sustainability goals.