Sensing for Agricultural Sustainability | Monitoring Sensors and the Co-production of Arable Farming Futures in the Netherlands

The research looks at agricultural monitoring sensors in Dutch arable farming, treating them as embedded in relations among farming practices, technological development, ideas of sustainable agriculture, and policy. It studies how farmers with differing sustainability aims use sensors in their everyday sensing and decisions. It also examines the socio-techno-ecological imaginaries through which farmers, scientists, and sensor developers make sense of sensors’ role in sustainable agriculture. A further part considers how sensor technologies and Dutch agricultural policy together render certain forms of sustainability measurable, governable, and supported. Across these studies, the work assesses when such sensors may support more ecology-based farming and when they may instead strengthen existing efficiency-oriented production systems.