EAGER: Pilot Comparative Research on Adoption of Digital Agricultural Technologies

该奖项是在NSF的EAGER资助机制下颁发的，该机制支持探索性研究的早期概念赠款。自20世纪90年代以来，一些数据密集型数字农业技术已在农场和其他食品生产业务中使用。数字农业技术的范围正在迅速扩大，其中一些技术正在更广泛地推广。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明显领域，包括对技术知识、依赖关系和农民之间关系的影响。鉴于新兴数字技术的多样性以及它们被引入的环境，这种间接影响将是高度多样化的，难以预测。迄今为止，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，很少关注间接影响，也很少从比较的角度进行分析。EAGER项目将在不同的环境中进行探索性试点研究，以收集数据，使调查人员能够对这一系列影响进行比较性的多地点研究。该项目适合EAGER资助，因为它旨在收集数据以测试和评估问题，作为为更大的比较项目制定提案的一步。采访将由一组具有多个地点和规模的当地农业知识的研究人员进行。虽然具体的数字技术和农民特征在设计上会因地点而异，但研究人员将在每个环境中调查四组相关问题。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营公司、政府部门、推广机构、CGIAR研究人员和学术分析人员。每个人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。农民采用的决定可能受到各种因素的驱动，而不是简单的底线利润预期。第三个是对农民行为的影响。最后一个奖项涉及对农民之间社会关系的影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.