FW-HTF-P: Anticipating Risks and Benefits of Precision Agriculture (PA) or the Future of Agricultural Work and Workforce: A Multi-Stakeholder Research Agenda

精准农业包括一系列基于数据的农业技术和实践，这些技术和实践在适当的时间和地点使用本地化的农业数据，以做出更好的农业决策。精准农业等技术变革可以提高经济生产力和环境可持续性，但可能会破坏农业工作和劳动力的未来。一些农业工作岗位将会丢失，因为机器和算法可以更有效地执行这些任务。然而，许多工作将蓬勃发展，提高工人的生产力和生活质量。这项规划补助金的总体目标是全面审查精准农业技术在不久的将来（10-15年）对农场或操作层面劳动力的风险和好处。本项目审查的劳动力将包括南达科他州和佛蒙特州的自营职业农民、农场和牲畜经营者、雇佣农场工人和农业支持专业人员。与来自工业、政府、学术界、工人和非营利非农业组织的利益攸关方进行规划讨论，将有助于理解和欣赏包容和负责任的劳动力和技术发展举措。这个项目的长期好处包括优先考虑，设计，以及更新精准农业技术和劳动力发展计划，以潜在地降低风险该项目的长期智力价值包括（1）确定多部门利益攸关方并在战略上将其联系起来，以提高对工作科学和劳动力发展的理解（例如，人们如何学习新技能或增强新工作角色和环境的技能）;（2）帮助发展精准农业技术研究的新领域（例如，注重数据隐私、信任和可访问性的系统设计）以及（3）促进参与式利益相关者方法的发展和修改（例如，用于展望农业工作理想未来的前瞻方法）和复杂的系统工具（例如，网络分析和专题建模）。该项目将召开焦点小组讨论会，询问PA对农业劳动力的许多未来影响，并从技术，社会，道德和治理等几个角度探讨风险和收益。焦点小组数据将通过主题建模和网络分析进行分析，以确定新的和现有的多部门网络连接的基础上行动者和组织的共同利益，关注和农业劳动力需求的愿景。该项目和随后的NSF未来人类技术前沿研究补助金将建立在南达科他州州立大学成功的精准农业研究计划和佛蒙特大学复杂系统的跨学科研究的基础上，以推进新的劳动力发展方法和精准农业技术，为未来的精准农业劳动力做好准备。该项目的最终目标是培养必要的研究人员、研究基础设施和基础工作，以扩大在FW-HTF完整研究提案水平上研究未来技术、未来工作人员和未来工作的机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Precision agriculture comprises a collection of data-based agricultural technologies and practices that use localized farm data, at the appropriate time and location to make better farming decisions. Technological transformations, such as precision agriculture can improve economic productivity and environmental sustainability but can be disruptive to the future of agricultural work and the workforce. Some agricultural jobs will be lost since the tasks can be more efficiently performed by machines and algorithms. However, many jobs will flourish and augment worker productivity and quality of life. The overall goal of this planning grant is to comprehensively examine the risks and benefits of precision agriculture technologies to the farm or operation-level workforce in the near future (10-15 years). Workforce examined in this project will include self-employed farmers, farm and livestock operators, hired farm workers and agriculture support professionals in South Dakota and Vermont. Planning discussions with stakeholders from the industry, government, academia, workers and non-profit non-farm organizations will help to create understanding and appreciation for an inclusive and responsible approach to workforce and technology development initiatives. The longer-term benefits of this project include prioritizing, designing, and updating precision agriculture technologies and workforce development initiatives that can potentially reduce risks (and augment benefits) for agricultural workforce.The long-term intellectual merit of this project includes (1) identifying and strategically linking multi-sectoral stakeholders to enhance understanding of the science of work and workforce development (e.g. how people learn new skills or augment skills to new work roles and contexts); (2) help evolve new areas of precision agriculture technology research (e.g. system designs that focus on data privacy, trust, and accessibility), and (3) foster development and modifications of participatory stakeholder approaches (e.g. foresight methods applied to envision desirable futures of agricultural work) and complex system tools (e.g. network analysis and topic modelling). The project will convene focus group discussions to interrogate numerous future implications of PA on the agricultural workforce and explore risks and benefits from several lenses, including technological, social, ethical, and governance. Focus group data will be analyzed through topic modeling and network analysis to identify new and existing multi-sectoral network connections based on actors and organizations' common interests, concerns, and visions of agricultural workforce requirements. This project and the subsequent NSF Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier research grant will build on the successful precision agriculture research initiatives at South Dakota State University and transdisciplinary research in Complex Systems at the University of Vermont to advance new workforce development approaches and precision agriculture technologies for the purpose of preparing future workforce under precision agriculture. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop the necessary research personnel, research infrastructure, and foundational work to expand the opportunities for studying future technology, future workers, and future work at the level of a FW-HTF full research proposal.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.