EAGER: Pilot Comparative Research on Adoption of Digital Agricultural Technologies

EAGER：数字农业技术采用的试点比较研究

• 批准号: 2310483
• 负责人: Glenn Stone
• 金额: $ 3.32万
• 依托单位: Sweet Briar College
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-03-15 至 2025-02-28
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2310483&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Pilot; Comparative; Research; Adoption

This award is made under NSF's EAGER funding mechanism, which supports Early-Concept Grants for Exploratory Research. Some data-intensive digital agriculture technologies have been in use in farms and other food production operations since the 1990s. The range of digital agricultural technologies is now expanding rapidly and some of these technologies are being introduced more widely. Historically most agricultural technologies have brought impacts beyond the obvious realms of yield and farmer profits, including impacts on technical knowledge, on dependencies, and relations among farmers. Given the diversity in emerging digital technologies and in the settings into which they are being introduced, such indirect impacts will be highly diverse and difficult to predict. To date, most research on digital agriculture has focused on a narrow set of issues, with scant attention to indirect impacts and little analysis from a comparative perspective. This EAGER project will conduct exploratory pilot research in diverse settings to collect data to allow investigators to develop a comparative, multi-sited study of this range of impacts. The project is appropriate for EAGER funding because it aims to collect data to test and evaluate questions as a step towards developing a proposal for the larger comparative project.Interviews will be conducted by a team of researchers with local knowledge of agriculture across multiple sites and scales. While the specific digital technologies and farmer characteristics will, by design, vary greatly across sites, researchers will investigate four sets of related questions in each setting. The first concerns identifying the recipients of information about farm operations and farmer behavior. Potential recipients include private companies, government offices, extension agents, CGIAR researchers, and academic analysts. Each of these has distinct expertise and sets of interests. The second concerns the social dynamics of adoption and non-adoption. Farmer decisions on adoption may be driven by various factors other than simple bottom-line profit expectations. The third concerns effects on farmer behavior. The last concerns effects on social relations among farmers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该奖项是根据美国国家科学基金会的热切资助机制颁发的，该机制支持探索性研究的早期概念资助。自20世纪90年代以来，一些数据密集型数字农业技术一直在农场和其他食品生产业务中使用。数字农业技术的范围现在正在迅速扩大，其中一些技术正在被更广泛地引入。从历史上看，大多数农业技术带来的影响超出了产量和农民利润的显而易见的领域，包括对技术知识、依赖关系和农民之间关系的影响。鉴于新兴数字技术及其引入环境的多样性，这种间接影响将是高度多样化和难以预测的。到目前为止，大多数关于数字农业的研究都集中在一系列狭窄的问题上，对间接影响的关注很少，从比较的角度进行分析的也很少。这个急切的项目将在不同的环境中进行探索性的试点研究，以收集数据，使调查人员能够对这一范围的影响进行比较、多地点的研究。该项目适合急需资金，因为它旨在收集数据来测试和评估问题，作为为更大的比较项目制定提案的一步。访谈将由一个拥有当地农业知识的研究团队在多个地点和规模进行。虽然具体的数字技术和农民的特征在设计上会在不同的地点有很大的不同，但研究人员将在每种情况下调查四组相关的问题。第一个问题是确定有关农场经营和农民行为的信息的接受者。潜在的接受者包括私人公司、政府办公室、推广代理商、CGIAR研究人员和学术分析师。其中每一个都有不同的专业知识和兴趣。第二个问题涉及收养和不收养的社会动态。农民对采用的决定可能受到各种因素的影响，而不是简单的利润预期。三是对农民行为的影响。最后一项涉及对农民社会关系的影响。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。