Digital personal data are increasingly understood as a key asset in our digital economies. But how should we value such data? Numerous policymakers, regulators, and stakeholders are trying to work out how to manage the collection, use, and valuation of data in order to balance the advantages and disadvantages of its collection and use. The negative implications of data practices may include privacy loss, data breaches, or declining market competition, while social and economic benefits include improved service delivery, more efficient welfare systems, or better products. Increasingly, data are conceptualized as an asset. To understand the value of data as an asset means understanding how data are configured as an asset; data value does not reflect ownership and property rights per se, but rather diverse modes of access and use restrictions (usually delineated by opaque contractual agreements) Data are increasingly controlled by a few, large digital technology firms, especially so-called Big Tech firms. In this paper, we use Google as a case study of how Big Tech firms configure and value digital data as an asset. We analyse how Google understands, frames, values, and monetizes the data they collect from users. We qualitatively analyse an extensive dataset of financial documentary materials produced by and about Google to identify the different modes of access and use restrictions that Google deploys to turn digital data into a valuable asset. We conclude that, despite being highly ambiguous, Google’s approach to data value focuses on monetizing users, not data.

How do small-scale farmers ‘adopt’ digital agriculture technologies, what is their use for diversified farming, and how do they position themselves vis-à-vis the seemingly inevitable era of ‘Agriculture 4.0’? This paper discusses results from the research project Diversity by Design to ponder how small-scale, biodiverse farmers in Ontario and Quebec, Canada, relate to digital agriculture and farming tools even though and exactly because these technologies are rarely part of their farming routines. These farmers’ perspectives did not reveal indifference to digital agriculture but a range of attitudes – from curiosity to a dismissal of digital tools – which also broadened the definition of what counts as ‘digital agriculture.’ We argue these perspectives stem from farmers’ positions ‘in difference’ to the dominant farming regime for which digital agriculture technologies are developed, and theorize this stance as farmers’ in-difference: a notional interest in and lack of concern for digital farming tools that reveals both their impracticality and potential for biodiverse farming. We propose farmers’ in-difference as a positional critique of a political economy that privileges tech-savvy, industrial agriculture and sustains asymmetrical power relations while obscuring the realities of small-scale, biodiverse farming. As such, farmers’ in-difference also troubles a more fundamental paradigm of ‘technology adoption,’ which inevitably assumes technologies to be at the center of analysis, rather than the farm, good working conditions, and the idea that digital tools may be more peripheral to small-scale farmers’ decision-making processes.

Scholarship flourishes in inclusive environments where open deliberations and generative feedback expand both individual and collective thinking. Many researchers, however, have limited access to such settings, and most conventional academic conferences fall short of promises to provide them. We have written this Field Report to share our methods for cultivating a vibrant intellectual community within the Science and Technology Studies Food and Agriculture Network (STSFAN). This is paired with insights from 21 network members on aspects that have allowed STSFAN to thrive, even amid a global pandemic. Our hope is that these insights will encourage others to cultivate their own intellectual communities, where they too can receive the support they need to deepen their scholarship and strengthen their intellectual relationships.

This research considers the ways in which digital agriculture (DA) technologies (like robotic machinery, big data applications, farm management software platforms and drones) fit into discourses of sustainable agriculture in the Canadian political and media landscape. To undertake this research, I conducted a discourse analysis of relevant government and media materials published between 2016 and 2022. What became evident was an ideology of optimization, which works to communicate that environmental sustainability needs to and will be optimized using DA technologies. I then consider how these findings are related to the federal fertilizer emissions reduction target, aiming to reduce emissions arising from fertilizer application in agricultural contexts by 30% below 2020 levels by 2030. I argue that discourse regarding this target deploys the ideology of optimization to keep current systems of fertilizer use in place, solidifying further the industrial and productivist paradigm of agriculture in Canada.

Through the lens of youth engaged in the grassroots network Research for the Front Lines (R4FL) in Turtle Island, this essay explores how youth use research as a form of solidarity with marginalized communities in the context of escalating crises, ranging from climate change to systemic inequities. R4FL supports Indigenous, Black, and marginalized groups facing disproportionate impacts from environmental and climate changes. Drawing on the experiences of a diverse group of youth researchers, we examine the barriers posed by traditional academic structures and advocate for a research paradigm that prioritizes community needs, transparency, and accountability. Our discussions highlight how youth leverage our knowledge and research skills in service of social justice and environmental equity.