Digital farming: a promise for a new spirit of productivism

Résumé 0

Since the end of the 2010s, digital agriculture has experienced significant developments, characterized by the creation of new businesses and research projects, as well as its introduction on the public policy agenda. We propose here to understand digital agriculture as a techno-scientific promise which renews the spirit of agricultural productivism. In the first part, we identify the discursive patterns and the singularity of this promise, which is subject to two tensions. The first opposes the proclamation of a technological break to the imperative of a needed credibility that requires an adhesion to existing structures. The second tension occurs between the rhetorical construction of a single model of digital agriculture and the diversity of innovations and agricultural and food models that it integrates. In the second part, we analyze the answer that this promise provides to the critics of the productivism model. This answer renews the spirit of agricultural productivism using three main arguments: i) disintermediation and participation of farmers and consumers; ii) consideration of a sustainable development; and iii) accommodation of a diversity of agricultural and food models.