Abstract
Precision farming systems delivered a new, more efficient and accurate cultural method of farming. Whilst the economic gains of precision farming were almost impossible for the local farmers interviewed to quantify, many farmers were satisfied with the technical gains precision farming systems enabled following adoption. Some of the realised benefits were new ways of seeing and knowing their crops, increased accuracy in crop work and accounting methods, and the practical and symbolic rewards of tidier farm landscapes. Cultural gains not only came at the cost of the technologies but to attain new organisational capacitates farmers had to abdicate certain degrees of control over information and means of production, which were appropriated by networks of off-farm firms. It concludes by discussing the appropriation of control over aspects of conventional farm systems by transnational firms in relation to traditional family farming cultures of the Somerset area.
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Addicott, J.E. (2020). Cultural methods. In: The Precision Farming Revolution. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9686-1_4
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