Noel Haufs
Ethnography on smart farming
Department of Society Studies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University
Supervisors: prof.dr. Anique Hommels, dr. Matthew Archer
Background
I’m an interdisciplinary social scientist immersed in STS. With ethnographic methods I research “smart farming” and the relationships between farmers, soils and data. Previously, I did fieldwork at the regenerative vegetable farm goutte.eu in Riemst, Belgium. As a curatorial assistant, I worked in the art-science museum ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the Falckenberg Collection/Deichtorhallen Hamburg in Germany. I am a graduate of the BA Arts and Culture and the MScRes Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology from Maastricht University. I contributed to a research project on Indigenous Knowledge Systems at the Okavango Research Institute in Botswana.
Content
My PhD project seeks to understand the relationships between farmers and soils, and how this relationship is augmented or hindered by smart technologies. Smart farming refers to the use of digital technologies to automate various agricultural practices ranging from planting to the application of fertilizers and pesticides to harvesting. It is an increasingly important area of both public and private investment. Although smart farming is often pitched as enhancing productivity and increasing yields, anthropologists and political ecologists have recently begun to reflect on the role smart technologies play in shifting the power relations between farm workers, farm managers, and investors, while also changing the practices of agriculture and their environmental impacts. Drawing on case studies in the Netherlands and Flanders, my PhD project entails in-depth ethnographic research among people involved in the development, promotion, and use of smart farming technologies, with a particular emphasis on the perspectives and experiences of farmers and their role in these interconnected processes. Through an analysis of cases over different farming styles and scales, the project will explore the role that digital technologies play in the spatial, temporal and cultural mediation of agricultural landscapes and the actors who inhabit them. I will draw connections between a ‘zoomed-in’ farm ethnography and a ‘zoomed-out’ analysis of the socio-ecological system around agriculture.
Publications
Haufs, N. C. (2024). The dark side of light: A multi-level perspective on negotiating society’s and nature’s “needs” in politics and art-design prototypes for public lighting. openresearch.amsterdam. https://openresearch.amsterdam/en/page/115948/msc–thesis-the-dark-side-of-light-a-multi-level-perspective-on.
