Designing For Sustainable and Equitable Agricultural Labor and Technologies
Olivia Doggett · 2023
This dissertation project begins from the literature-informed premise that dominant and historical conditions which have shaped the agricultural industry, namely scientific agriculture and racialized systems of migrant labor, may be perpetuated by today’s commercial agtech. Implications for commercial agtech carrying these dominant values are that emerging agtech may continue to exploit racialized labor and exclude sustainable farming priorities. My research investigates how these labor production systems, which have historically been used for commercial farming practices, may be redirected to support more sustainable and socially equitable farming. My project is situated between Ontario, Canada, where the largest concentration of migrant farmers work and Oaxaca, Mexico, the home state of many migrant farmers employed in Ontario. I rely upon qualitative and design research methods to explore how migrant farmers are affected by agtech, how migrant farmers’ agricultural knowledge and expertise are interpreted and used transnationally, and how Canadian growers and agtech designers envision how migrant labor fits into alternative food system futures.