Precision agriculture and the environmental turn

The increasing use of digital technologies in agriculture is partly based on an environmental argument put forward by companies, public policies, and agricultural organizations. Through their precision and quantification, data produced by sensors, algorithms, farm machinery systems, and digital advisory services are said to provide better control over production processes and, ultimately, to reduce environmental pollutions caused by farm productivism. This article looks at the scientific paradigm underpinning this promise of digitalization, through a study of French agronomic communities specialized in crop production (plant ecophysiology, agrometeorology, remote sensing, agricultural equipment, information technology). It seeks to identify the governance of the environmental turn embodied in the digitalization of agricultural technosciences. This work shows that the use of digital knowledge and data in agriculture is embedded in the productivist and reductionist approach which prevails in agronomic knowledge production in crop science, and strengthens the link between agronomic technoscience and its commercial applications.