The perilous promise of productivity: Affective politics of farming media and its consequences for the future of agriculture

Abstract

This article brings together historically disparate literatures, including rural sociology, critical food studies, new media studies, and affect theory to think critically, and productively, about digital agriculture—for example, robotic milking machines, precision techniques, data-intensive and algorithm-enabled predictive software. To make this argument, the article triangulates multiple forms of data, including that collected through recurring interviews with 25 farmers in Colorado, Kansas, and Nebraska who employed agricultural digital platforms. When taken together, these data tell a story about how new farm media enact worlds by affording networked affective subjectivities. They do this not because they tell users things—as suggested by their “smart” moniker. Perhaps most importantly, they animate what farmers feel through affordances tied to expressions of desire, risk, and promise; anticipatory-affects with immense political potential.