Robotic milking technologies and renegotiating situated ethical relationships on UK dairy farms

Robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) are novel technologies that take over the labor of dairy farming and reduce the need for human-animal interactions. Because robotic milking involves the replacement of 'conventional' twice-a-day milking managed by people with a system that supposedly allows cows the freedom to be milked automatically whenever they choose, some claim robotic milking has health and welfare benefits for cows, increases productivity, and has lifestyle advantages for dairy farmers. This paper examines how established ethical relations on dairy farms are unsettled by the intervention of a radically different technology such as AMS. The renegotiation of ethical relationships is thus an important dimension of how the actors involved are re-assembled around a new technology. The paper draws on in-depth research on UK dairy farms comparing those using conventional milking technologies with those using AMS. We explore the situated ethical relations that are negotiated in practice, focusing on the contingent and complex nature of human-animal-technology interactions. We show that ethical relations are situated and emergent, and that as the identities, roles, and subjectivities of humans and animals are unsettled through the intervention of a new technology, the ethical relations also shift. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Bovine and human becomings in histories of dairy technologies: robotic milking systems and remaking animal and human subjectivity

This paper positions the recent emergence of robotic or automatic milking systems (AMS) in relation to discourses surrounding the longer history of milking technologies in the UK and elsewhere. The mechanisation of milking has been associated with sets of hopes and anxieties which permeated the transition from hand to increasingly automated forms of milking. This transition has affected the relationships between humans and cows on dairy farms, producing different modes of cow and human agency and subjectivity. In this paper, drawing on empirical evidence from a research project exploring AMS use in contemporary farms, we examine how ongoing debates about the benefits (or otherwise) of AMS relate to longer-term discursive currents surrounding the historical emergence of milking technologies and their implications for efficient farming and the human and bovine experience of milk production. We illustrate how technological change is in part based on understandings of people and cows, at the same time as bovine and human agency and subjectivity are entrained and reconfigured in relation to emerging milking technologies, so that what it is to be a cow or human becomes different as technologies change. We illustrate how this results from – and in – competing ways of understanding cows: as active agents, as contributing to technological design, as ‘free’, as ‘responsible’ and/or as requiring surveillance and discipline, and as efficient co-producers, with milking technologies, of milk

Country life: agricultural technologies and the emergence of new rural subjectivities

Rural areas have long been spaces of technological experimentation, development and resistance. In the UK, this is especially true in the post-second world war era of productivist food regimes, characterised by moves to intensification. The technologies that have developed have variously aimed to increase yields, automate previously manual tasks, and create new forms of life. This review focuses on the relationships between agricultural technologies and rural lives. While there has been considerable media emphasis on the material modification, and creation, of new rural lives through emerging genetic technologies, the review highlights the role of technologies in co-producing new rural subjectivities. It does this through exploring relationships between agricultural technologies and gender, changing approaches to understanding and intervening in animal lives, and how automation shifts responsibility for productive work on farms. In each of these instances, even ostensibly mundane technologies can significantly affect what it is to be a farmer, a farm advisor or a farm animal. However, the review cautions against technological determinism, drawing on recent work from Science and Technology Studies to show that technologies do not simply reconfigure lives but are themselves transformed by the actors and activities with which they are connected. The review ends by suggesting avenues for future research

Automation and the farmer

A current problem in Australia is the shortage of human assistance for farmers. Automation and technological innovation are discussed as answers to this, delegating tasks to ‘robot’ systems. By way of example, projects are examined that have been conducted over the years at the NCEA, including vision guidance of tractors, quality assessment of produce, discrimination between plants and weeds and determination of cattle condition using machine vision. Strategies are explored for extending the current trends that use machine intelligence to reduce the need for human intervention, including the concept of smaller but more intelligent autonomous devices. Concepts of teleoperation are also explored, in which assistance can be provided by operatives remote from the process. With present advances in communication bandwidth, techniques that are common for monitoring remote trough water levels can be extended to perform real-time dynamic control tasks that range from selective picking to stock drafting

Organic Farming Scenarios: Operational Analysis and Costs of implementing Innovative Technologies

The objective of this study has been to design a number of farm scenarios representing future plausible and internally consistent organic farming enterprises based on milk, pig, and plant production and use these farm scenarios as the basis for the generation of generalised knowledge on labour and machinery input and costs. Also, an impact analysis and feasibility study of introducing innovative technologies into the organic production system has been invoked. The labour demand for the production farms ranged from 61 to 253hha1 and from 194 to 396hLU1 (LU is livestock units) for work in the animal houses. Model validation results showed that farm managerial tasks amount to 14–19% of the total labour requirement. The impact of introducing new technologies and work methods related to organic farming was evaluated using two innovative examples of weed control: a weeding robot and an integrated system for band steaming. While these technologies increased the capital investment required, the labour demand was reduced by 83–85% in sugar beet and 60% in carrots, which would improve profitability by 72–85% if fully utilised. Profitability is reduced, if automation efforts result in insufficient weed removal compared to manual weeding. Specifically, the benefit gained by robotic weeding was sensitive to the weed intensity and the initial price of the equipment, but a weeding efficiency of under 25% is required to make it unprofitable. This approach demonstrates the feasibility of applying and testing operational models in organic farming systems in the continued evaluation and documentation of labour and machinery inputs

Agricultural robotics: part of the new deal?

Throughout the fifth edition of the International Forum of Agricultural Robots (FIRA) in December 2020, more than 1,500 farmers, manufacturers, advanced technology suppliers, innovators, investors, journalists and experts from 71 countries around the world gathered to ask questions, share stories and exchange ideas about agricultural robots. This book is a journey into the state of the art of this industry in 2020, and includes 27 agricultural robot information sheets. It is designed to provide a nuanced look at the industry’s most pressing topics, from the overarching impact of the global food crisis to the everyday influence of semi-autonomous tractors on a family-owned farm in France. The book achieves this goal by taking a deep dive into the perspectives shared by FIRA 2020 presenters and panelists

Exploring the human-animal-technology nexus: power relations and divergent conduct. The example of automated dairy farming.

This chapter develops an agenda for discussing less-than-convivial more-than-human relations. It reviews existing work on such relations before developing a terminology of ‘divergent conduct’ aiming to better express such relationships. The chapter uses an empirical case study of automated or robotic milking systems, and focuses on the relationships these establish between machines, humans, and cows in specific places. Divergent conduct aims to express how humans and nonhumans co-produce activities which are likely to differ from accounts of trouble-free introductions of technologies. The concept emphasises the agency of animals while paying attention to their relationships with people and machines. As such, it emphasises how farming is constituted in relation to multiple human and nonhuman requirements, and their related conducts, which may pull in different directions. The chapter argues that divergent conduct provides a way of exploring problematic entanglements in which inequalities of power can be many-layered and intersectional

Agrarian questions, digitalisation of the countryside, immigrant labour in agriculture and the official discourses on rural development in the Uppsala region, Sweden

This paper focuses on the Uppsala region of Sweden to analyse the dynamics of new agrarian questions intersecting with the prospects for immigrants to work in agriculture in the region. The paper seeks to explore the role of labour skills, agricultural automation and digitalisation of rural areas in local patterns of agrarian change and why and how they became barriers for the integration of immigrants through agricultural jobs in the region. The paper starts by laying out some basic conceptual insights to explore the current potential of agriculture to provide employment and livelihood possibilities for immigrants in Sweden and within this context the paper addresses issues of digitalisation and current technological trends in farming and rural development. Empirically, the paper is based on semi-structured interviews conducted with local farmers, officials working on rural development and integration programmes at the Uppsala county administrative board level, officials working on rural development and environmental planning at one rural municipality of the Uppsala region, and members of rural advocacy networks working with both rural development and integration issues in Sweden. In addition, the paper includes the analysis of regional and national policy documents developing new regional and rural development plans. Furthermore, the paper analyses information published in one of the leading Swedish magazines of the Federation of Swedish Farmers which focuses on agricultural development and technology and the paper uses other secondary sources

Path-dependencies in Norwegian dairy and beef farming communities: Implications for climate mitigation

Within Norwegian agriculture, combined dairy and beef production has been identified as a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and thus targeted for significant reductions. The article examines the path dependency of the dairy and beef production system in Norway and focuses on identifying lock-ins. The authors used qualitative methods to gather information from stakeholder meetings in Trøndelag and Rogaland counties. They explored the stakeholders’ responses to two different visions of agriculture in the future: the improved utilisation of outfields using Norwegian Red cattle and increasing production per animal by using feed concentrates. Six key areas of lock-in were identified: technology investment, culture, feeding strategy, policy, access to new farmland through moorland conversion, and ownership of the climate issue. The findings suggest that the current pathway in agriculture is strongly locked into production orientation through these lock-ins, making a production reduction option difficult to implement. There was also widespread belief among the stakeholders that the system of combined dairy and beef production was a climate-friendly option, suggesting that farmers are not convinced that a change in this direction is required. The authors conclude that the option of reducing production would be difficult to implement without addressing the multiple lock-in effects.acceptedVersio

D.2.4: Recommendations for a common European research agenda

Organic farming is knowledge intensive and in supporting farmers in enhancing their production systems, there is a need to improve how knowledge is shared. This is the overall aim of the OK-Net Arable project. Work Package 2 of the project is concerned with facilitating the testing of practical and educational materials with farmer innovation groups to improve knowledge provision in this sector. The work package adopts an interactive multi-actor approach, bringing together practitioners from regional innovation groups with each other, and with advisers and scientists. The aim of this report is to give a brief overview of the most important topics in organic arable farming for a common European research agenda. It identifies topics and open questions that are related to the main obstacles for increasing and stabilising yields in organic arable farming in Europe that should be considered in a common research agenda. It builds on the farmers’ perspective of knowledge gaps and questions (Cullen et al 2016, D2.1) and the experience from testing knowledge exchange tools with farmers (Bliss et al 2018, D2.2). This is contrasted with the researchers’ perspective from the Ok-Net Arable project on which knowledge is already there and which is still needed (Niggli et al 2016, D3.1). Perspectives from the project partners, the partner countries and national research agendas on approaches that bring together the relevant actors to discuss and shape research agendas were also considered. The ten recommendations for research topics are based on experiences made in the OK-Net Arable project. They include topics related to cropping systems and interactions, weed management, soil fertility and nutrient management and pest and disease control. Not all topics are equally relevant across the whole of Europe and in all areas both fundamental and applied research is needed. The farmers taking part in the OK-Net arable project were interested in a better understanding of the systemic aspects of organic cropping systems as well as in applied solutions to specific problems. There also is a need for further opportunities for knowledge exchange between farmers and farmers and advisors in Europe