Tag: greenhouse vertical farming

Aquifers also help move water from areas of recharge finding to areas dominated by extraction that are miles or — in very large aquifers — a few tens of miles away. Unfortunately, in many areas of California we have not been replenishing this account sufficiently during wet years. Groundwater resources across California’s agricultural regions have been more stressed during the current drought than at any other time in history finding. In most wells, depth to groundwater has exceeded that of the same or nearby wells in the 2007–2009 drought, and exceeds the depths recorded in the mid-20th century, prior to local, state and federal water projects finding coming on-line. The demand for groundwater has been increasing due to the increased acreage of intensively grown crops, large-scale conversion of range land and field crops to permanent crops and uncertainty about water deliveries from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the heart of California’s elaborate surface water conveyance system finding.Lower groundwater levels have significantly increased pumping costs and increased the need for constructing deeper wells where existing wells were not sufficiently deep to access falling water levels finding. Greater reliance on groundwater during the drought has caused land subsidence on a large scale in the Central Valley finding, coastal basins and Southern California; it has also exacerbated seawater intrusion where pumping occurs in aquifers near the coast finding. As pumping lowers the water table, water quality is sometimes compromised by saline water or other naturally occurring contaminants finding. Rapidly falling water tables also lead to more-contaminated shallow groundwater entering drinking water wells. Agricultural regions in California are challenged not only by dwindling groundwater supplies — a critical drought insurance for California — but also by significant groundwater quality degradation, in particular from nitrate and salt pollution. Pollutants may come from urban sources finding,vertical farm system domestic household sources finding or agricultural sources finding.

A number of studies have shown a high incidence of nitrate, above drinking water standards, in domestic and public drinking water supply wells; in some counties, more than 40% of domestic wells exceed the nitrate limit for safe drinking water finding. Salt accumulation in streams and groundwater has also been found to be significant finding, with potentially punitive economic consequences: By 2030, the combined impact of surface water and groundwater salinization to agriculture and the California economy, if current conditions continue and no preventative action is taken, is estimated at $6 to $10 billion annually in lost production costs, job losses and other impacts finding. The problems of groundwater overdraft and water quality degradation have been recognized for some time. Increasing public concern over the past two decades has raised the level of local, state and federal government engagement and of actions by policy- and decision makers. Groundwater users and wastewater dischargers in the urban and the agricultural sectors face new regulatory requirements. While urban governments have a long history of dealing with limited water resources, the agricultural community is experiencing significant and historic changes in its involvement with managing groundwater extraction and protecting groundwater resources for the future. Based on these principles, the legislation lays out a framework for the entire state to manage its groundwater. In 127 medium- and high-priority groundwater basins finding, groundwater sustainability agencies finding will have to be formed no later than June 2017. These GSAs will be responsible for developing and implementing a groundwater sustainability plan finding that has specific objectives and meets specified sustainability targets consistent with the core principles of the SGMA. GSAs have 3 to 5 years to develop and begin implementing their GSP finding. GSAs must show significant progress in implementing their plan and achieve sustainability no later than 2042.Funding for GSP activities will likely come from a combination of state and local funding sources. In over drafted basins, adjudications may continue to be an alternative process to achieve sustainability, despite the high cost and often years-long legal proceedings involved. As of this writing, the Legislature is actively considering multiple bills that would create an alternative, streamlined adjudication process.

In the intermediate and long run, the main impact from this legislation will be that new recharge and groundwater storage options will be pursued, and, where needed, pumpers may see restrictions in pumping or well drilling. Where additional recharge is available, pumpers may be asked to pay additional costs to secure the recharge needed in return for their right to continue pumping. Basin boundaries may be adjusted and may include fractured rock aquifers currently not recognized as groundwater basins by the Department of Water Resources although they are subject to significant groundwater extraction in some areas. Litigation and state intervention may be inevitable in some cases, but it remains to be seen how frequently that route will be chosen over mediation or facilitated GSP development and implementation. In either case, the new groundwater legislation marks a turning point in California water management by no longer allowing for continued depletion of groundwater resources and by requiring an active, well-informed groundwater management system that is better integrated with surface water management, water quality management and land use decisions to maintain a balance that best serves competing human, economic and environmental health interests.The federal Clean Water Act addresses only surface water quality. By contrast, California’s water quality law, the Porter Cologne Water Quality Control Act of 1969 finding, includes the protection of groundwater quality. The California Legislature designated the State Water Resources Control Board finding and nine newly created regional water boards finding to implement the Porter-Cologne Act. The primary function of the RWBs is to establish a basin plan that identifies water quality goals and to develop regulatory programs to achieve those goals. Non-point sources of potential groundwater pollution finding were long exempted from direct oversight through unconditional waste discharge waivers. However, those waivers were discontinued by the Legislature in 2002, which led to new regulatory requirements for agricultural and other non-point source water dischargers finding. Focused on surface water quality in the first decade after 2002, these regulatory efforts now increasingly address groundwater quality. They require demonstrable source control and documentation of groundwater nitrate and salt discharges and also provide state and federal funds to improve the drinking water supplies of communities affected by poor groundwater quality.

The Central Valley RWB and Central Coast RWB regions are home to large areas of California’s most intensive agricultural operations and have therefore developed the most extensive regulations. But all RWBs are obligated to consider discharges from non-point sources to groundwater and to develop basin plan amendments for nutrient and salt management finding.The 2007 Dairy Order was the first comprehensive California groundwater quality permitting program applicable specifically to farms. It sets the framework for permitting dairy discharges of nutrients and salts to surface water and groundwater. The dairy order requires dairies to prepare nutrient and waste management plans, annually report nutrient budgets for individual fields, tonnage of manure exports and water quality of on-site wells. Targeted shallow groundwater monitoring and efforts to develop improved management practices that demonstrably improve groundwater quality are implemented through the Central Valley Dairy Representative Monitoring Program. This program is led by a coalition of dairy producers that is working closely with the RWB; it offers an efficient alternative to individual dairy groundwater monitoring plans.Upon its inception in the early 2000s, the Central Valley ILRP finding focused on surface water and watershed protection through farmer education, certification and coalition-led stream water quality monitoring and management. But since 2010, the Central Valley RWB has been expanding the ILRP to add elements that also protect and improve groundwater quality, primarily nitrate, pesticide and salt contamination, through source management on irrigated lands. In the Central Valley, the ILRP covers about 7 million irrigated acres with several tens of thousands of individual farms. Permits finding are given either to individual farms or to regional ILRP coalitions, organizations that farms can join to represent them collectively with the RWB. ILRP coalitions representing large groups of farmers include the Sacramento River Watershed, Rice Farmers, Eastern San Joaquin Watershed, San Joaquin County and Delta, Western San Joaquin Watershed, Tulare Lake Basin Area, and Western Tulare Lake Basin Area coalitions. Each coalition is subject to a separate RWB order. Under the expanded ILRP, the first step is a Groundwater Assessment Report finding, which is currently being developed or has been developed by each of the coalitions. The assessment identifies historic and current groundwater quality conditions and identifies vulnerable groundwater regions. The assessment provides the rationale for the monitoring and reporting requirements, which may differ within and between regions, and allows for a tiered program of monitoring and reporting requirements for sub-regions to reflect the diverse potential impacts to groundwater. In a next step, beginning in 2015, field specific nutrient management planning forms will need to be completed by all farmers for the first time. Generally, farmers will now be required to implement management practices, keep appropriate records finding and report some of the information collected to their coalition. The coalitions are further responsible for performing groundwater monitoring, typically in a network of domestic and monitoring wells. As in the dairy program,vertical indoor farming the coalitions are also responsible for developing management practices that demonstrably improve and protect groundwater quality. A significant focus will be on documenting field nitrogen inputs and outputs and on improving nitrogen-use efficiency.In 2012, the Central Coast RWB adopted an update to the ILRP, called the Agricultural Order finding. The program covers about 4,000 farms on about 400,000 acres. Based on its own groundwater assessment work, the RWB created three tiers of farms depending on the potential risk they pose to groundwater quality. The tiers are determined by pesticide use, farm size, nitrate occurrence in nearby public supply and farm wells, and by crop type.

About one in seven farms are in the highest tier, tier three finding, about half of the farms, mostly vineyards, fall in the lowest tier finding, and the remainder are in tier two. As in the Central Valley, farms in all tiers are required to perform proper nutrient, pesticide and irrigation management, documented in their farm plans finding. Back flow prevention and proper well abandonment are also required on all farms. Unlike in the Central Valley ILRP, all farms need to sample groundwater from existing wells twice during the first year. Subsequent groundwater sampling frequency is greater for farms in tier three than in tier two or one. Farms can choose to implement the groundwater sampling program individually or join a coalition that has been created specifically to perform groundwater monitoring and to support farmers with the implementation of the Agricultural Regulatory Program.Operating at an even larger scale and affecting stakeholders beyond agriculture finding is the Central Valley Salinity Alternatives for Long-Term Sustainability finding program. In coordination with the RWB, it was created in 2009 by stakeholders to develop a comprehensive salt and nutrient basin plan amendment for the Central Valley that complies with the state’s recycled water policy finding. The development of the basin plan amendment includes a wide range of assessments by CV-SALTS: nitrate and salt source loading from agricultural, urban and industrial sources, extensive review of surface water and groundwater quality data, and development of potential management practice and infrastructure solutions. The CV-SALTS program builds upon and is coordinated with the Central Valley Dairy Order and ILRP efforts. It focuses in particular on avoiding future salinization of the Central Valley aquifer system under SWRCB’s overarching antidegradation policy. Stakeholders are organized within the Central Valley Salinity Coalition finding, which is scheduled to provide its final salt and nutrient management plan finding to the RWB in 2016. As part of these efforts, a recent Strategic Salt Accumulation and Transport Study finding compared historic water quality data to an assessment of current salt and nutrient loading in the Central Valley; it determined that approximately 1.2 million acre-feet of Central Valley groundwater needs to be desalinized annually to meet long-term irrigation and drinking water standards. SSALTS suggests various alternatives for water treatment, including desalination and evaporation ponds. Implementation costs are estimated to be roughly $70 billion over the next 30 years, of which $20 billion can be raised by selling approximately 1.1 million acrefeet of ultra clean treated water annually to urban areas. These costs include some saline water being disposed of by deep injection and some being stored in salt accumulation areas on the Tulare Lake Bed finding.

Measuring costs per unit of output, the authors find that privatization increased the efficiency of firms operating in both competitive and non-competitive environments, and that the efficiency gains from privatization were significantly greater in non-competitive environments than in competitive ones.These results provide a uniquely controlled setting in which to study the effect of competition on relative efficiency, and also the relative importance of agency issues and soft budget constraint issues in publicly-owned firms.Since public firms should become less relatively less efficient than prive firms as competition increases, because soft budget constraints shield them from competitive pressures, and relatively more efficient as competition increases, because the observable performance of other firms reduces agency issues, the fact that efficiency gains from privatization attenuated with the level of competition provides evidence that the effects of agency issues dominated the effects of soft budget constraints in this study.The study also documents the existence of subsidies to public firms prior to privatization – amounting to 12.7% of GDP in Mexico – suggesting that reductions in agency-related issues due to competition had to surmount substantial soft budget constraint issues that presumably increased with the level of competition that firms faced.Because La Porta and Lopez-de-Silanes separates ownership effects by competition level, examines a large number of firms, and is exceptionally careful and thorough in its approach, it is one of the most persuasive studies in providing evidence of the effects of competition on ownership efficiency.The vast majority of studies that examine public and private efficiency differences in noncompetitive settings are studies of privatization efforts that compare the performance of enterprises before and after state ownership.

A complication in studying privatization programs is that ownership effects could take place gradually,nft hydroponic and might not be adequately captured just after privatization takes place.Additionally, the announcement of a government’s intentions to privatize sometimes preceded the actual transfer of ownership by several years, during which the perception of ownership transferrability and a period of “shake-out”could increase public firm efficiency.Lastly, privatization programs are typically accompanied by other regulatory changes – in particular, many governments shielded state-owned firms from competition, and undertook market liberalization measures either concurrently with privatization, or after a grace period during which newly privatized firms are shielded from competition.Unless these liberalization effects are separated, studies may compare public monopolies to private firms operating with limited competition, and thus conflate the effects of competition and ownership on efficiency.Of the 9 studies in non-competitive environments in our review, 5 study privatizations of telecommunications firms.Within this industry, Wallsten and Boylaud and Nicoletti both find no ownership effects from privatization, while Ros , Ramamurti , and Boles de Boer and Evans find that private firms are more efficient than state-owned firms.Wallsten studies the privatization of telecom monopolies in 30 countries across Africa and Latin America, from 1984 to 1997.Controlling for competition changes and other concurrent programs that may have affected firm efficiency, he finds no effect of privatization on labor productivity in the absence of additional regulatory measures.When privatized firms are faced with price regulation from an independent regulator, though, privatization yields efficiency benefits.This result is consistent with theory: By keeping prices low, regulators essentially create the pressure for efficiency that competition does, which differentially affects private firms if public firms face soft budget constraints.

Boylaud and Nicoletti study telecom privatizations in 23 OECD countries from 1991 to 1997, and similarly conclude that ownership did not affect labor productivity, when controlling for the level of competition and also the time to liberalization.However, both the number of competitors and decreases in the time to liberalization are associated with increases in productivity.The authors interpret the effects of time to liberalization as being due to the effects of potential competition, which may have stimulated managers and employees in public firms to increase efforts to avoid unemployment as profit margins were reduced.Such responses may be partially attributable to an anticipated reduction in cross subsidization across internal groups, which the authors describe as common prior to privatization.However, diminished agency issues would only occur when actual competitors emerged, and the separately significant effect of the number of competitors provides evidence that agency issues are important.Notable in this study is the fact that the government “generally maintained the largest single share of the PTOs capital and sometimes retained special voting rights in the privatised enterprises.”Indeed, some studies find that ownership change is only effective when firms are fully privatized.Ros , Ramamurti , and Boles de Boer and Evans all find productivity improvements in telecom firms following privatization.Ros studies a mix of firms that were either privatized during the period from 1986 to 1995, or were private throughout the period, and measures ownership effects on labor productivity while controlling for competition.Ramamurti finds significant ownership effects in 3 of 4 telecoms studied, but does not separate competition and ownership effects, and acknowledges that the level of competition may have changed after privatization.Boles de Boer and Evans provide a case study of the 1990 privatization of Telecom New Zealand, and study efficiency changes during the period from 1987, when the market was liberalized, to 1993, when the first actual competitors entered.

As a case study, the evidence the auhtors present is inherently less generalizable than that of other studies.On the other hand, the authors are less restricted to use variables that are common across all firms being studied, and can be precise about the levels of competition and other contextual details of the privatization.The study measures productivity as the level of output per cost of inputs, where inputs include labor, material inputs, and capital.They find that productivity increased by 10% per year during the study period, and that unit costs reduced by 5.8% per year.Like Ramamurti , the authors do not separate the effects of competition and ownership in their examination; however, competitors only emerged in the final year of the study, and potential competition due to deregulation was present throughout.A concern permeating all the telecom studies is that the effects of ownership are averaged across both the monopoly conditions and conditions of limited competition following market liberalization, making it impossible to isolate the precise market conditions under which these effects occur.Caves and Christiansen provides some evidence on ownership effects in a static competitive environment, by comparing two Canadian railroads – one private, one state owned – who were each other’s sole competitors for many decades.Measuring the cost of inputs per unit of output, they find that the state-owned railroad was initially less productive than the private one, but find no significant differences between the two by the end of the 19- year study period.Since the railroads began to compete 30 years prior to the study period, their findings suggest that efficiency improvements may take a very long time to adjust to a change in the level of competition.Assuming this is true, the privatization studies that average efficiency effects across short periods of time during which monopolies were exposed to competition may be best placed as studies reporting relative efficiencies under monopoly conditions.Both Caves and Christiansen and Ramamurti make another contribution to the analysis: While they both study railroads that faced little or no direct competition , both argue that the railroads they study faced substantial indirect presure from other forms of transportation that competed for both passengers and freight.Ramamurti explicitly documents the market share of the Argentinian railroad he studies, and finds that only 8% of freight and intercity travel were handled by the railroad, along with 15-20% of suburban travel.Since ameliorating agency issues requires the observation of direct competitors, both studies exist in a non-competitive environment for agency purposes.However, indirect competitive pressure reduced prices and profit margins, and thus expand the efficiency gap between public and private firms due to soft budget constraints.With both unmitigated agency issues and exacerbated soft budget constraint issues, theory would predict the efficiency gap between these railroads to be at their largest.

Indeed, Ramamurti finds that privatization resulted in a 370% increase in labor productivity,nft system and explicitly documents the existence of railroad subsidies to the state-owned Argentinian railroad prior to privatization.Caves and Christiansen, who paradoxically find no significant differences by the end of their study, also point out that the state’s role was “restricted to that of a stockholder”in their study – no subsidies were provided to the state owned railroad.Both of these studies point to the potential relevance of state subsidies in reducing efficiency gains, particularly in environments where firms face substantial competitive pressure.Ehrlich et al conduct a very careful study of 23 airlines with varying ownership types, and estimate a model wherein productivity is endogenously and separately determined for each airline.The authors include several robustness checks using alternate specifications, and do not consistently find level differences between the cost efficiencies of private and public airlines across all specifications.However, they find that private firms have a relatively higher rate of cost reduction over time in each specification that they test.To examine whether ownership effects vary with competition levels, the authors separately test the efficiency of the subset of airlines in the US, Canada, France, and the UK, arguing that that they exist in competitive environments because there are more domestic competitors within these nations.Although the authors find qualitatively similar results for these airlines, it is unclear whether airlines in those four countries might not face very different competitive environments from airlines that are the sole carriers for their countries, to the extent that airlines compete internationally, and also because – as the authors themselves point out – the International Air Transport Association coordinated fares and erected barriers to entry for all airlines during the period of study.Also notable in this study is the fact that both private and public airlines have historically been subject to soft budget constraints via “bailouts”,so that state-owned airlines may not be subject to a widened efficiency gap at higher competition levels in this industry.Funkhouser and MacAvoy study firms in a variety of industries in Indonesia, and compare their efficiencies by computing the ratio of each firm’s average costs to the appropriate industry average.Although they find no differences at the 5% level, private firms are significantly more efficient at the 10% level.Cullinane, Song, and Gray use a method that is increasingly popular in the recent literature to estimate cost efficiency: stochastic production frontier function estimation.Rather than looking at the cost of producing a unit of each output separately, or creating an index to evaluate the cost of all outputs simultaneously, the method establishes an efficient frontier of production using the data available, and evaluates each firm’s efficiency based on its distance from the frontier.The authors study 15 container ports in Asia, and find no significant differences in efficiency based on ownership.Of the 7 studies reviewed that study competitive environments, only 3 found that private firms were more efficient than state-owned firms.Of those 3, Vining and Boardman and Diboky both used measures of efficiency that are sensitive to revenue gains; it is unclear whether the measures used in Chen and Yeh are price-sensitive or not.As the evidence in Section 1.3.1 suggests, the efficiency of private firms may be overstated using price-sensitive measures, when markets are not highly competitive.Diboky and Chen and Yeh are similar in other respects.Both studies use Data Envelopment Analysis to estimate the technical efficiency of public and private firms that contemporaneously exist over the study period.Diboky studies results for 300 insurance firms in Germany that compete directly with each other; Chen and Yeh examine 34 domestic banks in Taiwan that face additional competition from 67 banks that are partially foreign-owned.Diboky measures firm “outputs”as gross premiums and net income, while Chen and Yeh measure quantities of loan services and portfolio investment.Chen and Yeh find that private banks outperform public banks; Diboky finds that public banks were substantially less efficient than either private or “mutual”banks of mixed public and private ownership.Vining and Boardman study a variety of industries whose four-firm concentration ratios vary from 14% to 43%, suggesting that the competitive environment in their study bordered on monopolistic competition, by the standards of this review.In such an environment, their use of efficiency metrics such as sales per employee and sales per asset may have caused private firms to appear more efficient than state-owned firms for reasons of higher prices, rather than lower unit costs.

A related anaerobic process is nitrate-dependent iron oxidation; a recent review has highlighted, in the context of this process, how the simultaneous presence of nitrate-reducing and iron-reducing areas can potentially be important to nitrogen cycling.Under anaerobic conditions, iron can also be linked to ammonium oxidation.If reactions that generate N2O are active in any of the above processes, they may be stimulated or suppressed by different forms of iron, such as the two indices examined in this study.The degree of this influence under different conditions will then determine the importance of iron relative to other soil properties.Our treatments consisted of two contrasting values for soil moisture and addition of amendments.This was done in order to explore the importance of iron across a wide range of conditions while at the same time avoiding a cumbersome dataset.It is clear from Figure 1 that the importance of iron can change between the two limits of each treatment variable.For example, between 50 and 100% WHC under ammonium fertilization, iron moves from a position of modest relevance to become the highest-ranked driver.Since our results show the importance of iron only at two distinct values, we do not know how its importance under intermediate conditions changes between the two end values.Even without such intermediate data, the differences between contrasting treatments can aid in understanding the mechanisms at work in generating N2O.In the above example, the importance of iron rises markedly under ammonium fertilization as soil moisture increases from 50 to 100% WHC; FeP surpasses FeA in strength as well.

As mentioned earlier, ammonia is oxidized to hydroxylamine, and this can react with iron to produce N2O.In a wetter soil,dutch buckets solutes are more mobile, which can lead to greater production of hydroxylamine as well as greater contact of hydroxylamine with iron.FeP is also likely to be more soluble than FeA.Any combination of these effects might elevate the importance of iron and change which form is more relevant in explaining the associated N2O data.The overall position of iron among other drivers of N2O emission is determined by both its reactivity and the presence of processes subject to its influence.Ample opportunity for inquiry exists for defining the extent of the relationship between iron and N2O in managed as well as unmanaged ecosystems, and this can provide useful practical and theoretical information.For example, including iron in current models of N2O emission may strengthen their predictive ability.In addition, inasmuch as certain indices of iron can be related to its physical or chemical characteristics, observing the relationship between a given index and N2O production, and how this changes under different conditions, may provide insight into the specific reactions at work.As stated earlier, production of N2O is generally accepted to be a microbial affair, and it is logical to assume that the factors that regulate the activity of N2O-producing microorganisms should be the same factors that regulate N2O production.This is not incorrect, but is perhaps a somewhat restrictive rendering; a more accurate framework might include ‘‘biotic-abiotic reaction sequences’’that generate N2O, such as those outlined above.Indeed, ‘‘the complex interactions that occur between microorganisms and other biotic and abiotic factors’’ have been suggested to be a key part of further understanding greenhouse gas production and improving predictions.Pesticide drift, which is the off-target movement of pesticides, is recognized as a major cause of pesticide exposure affecting people as well as wildlife and the environment.In the United States in 2004, > 1,700 investigations were conducted in 40 states because of drift complaints, and 71% of the incident investigations confirmed that drift arose from pesticide applications to agricultural crops.Pesticide drift has been reported to account for 37–68% of pesticide illnesses among U.S.agricultural workers [California Department of Pesticide Regulation 2008; Calvert et al.2008].Community residents, particularly in agricultural areas, are also at risk of exposure to pesticide drift from nearby fields.

Alarcon et al.reported that 31% of acute pesticide illnesses that occurred at U.S.schools were attributed to drift exposure.The occurrence and extent of pesticide drift are affected by many factors, such as the nature of the pesticide 2010], equipment and application techniques , the amount of pesticides applied, weather , and operator care.Pesticide applicators are required to use necessary preventive measures and to comply with label requirements to minimize pesticide drift.Pesticide regulations such as the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and EPA’s Worker Protection Standard require safety measures for minimizing the risk of pesticide exposure , and many states have additional regulations for drift mitigation.Better understanding about the magnitude, trend, and characteristics of pesticide poisoning from drift exposure of agricultural pesticides would assist regulatory authorities with regulatory, enforcement, and education efforts.The purpose of this study was to estimate the magnitude and incidence of acute pesticide poisoning associated with pesticide drift from outdoor agricultural applications in the United States during 1998–2006 and to describe the exposure and illness characteristics of pesticide poisoning cases arising from off-target drift.We also examined factors associated with illness severity and large events that involved five or more cases.Participating surveillance programs identify cases from multiple sources, including health care providers, poison control centers, workers’ compensation claims, and state or local government agencies.They collect information on the pesticide exposure incident through investigation, interview, and medical record review.In California, on some occasions, such as large drift events, active surveillance is undertaken for further case finding by interviewing individuals living or working within the vicinity affected by the off target drift.Although the SENSOR-Pesticides program focuses primarily on occupational pesticide poisoning surveillance, all of the SENSOR-Pesticides state programs except California collect data on both occupational and nonoccupational cases.In California, PISP captures both occupational and nonoccupational cases.SENSOR Pesticides and PISP classify cases based on the strength of evidence for pesticide exposure, health effects, and the known toxicology of the pesticide and use slightly different criteria for case classification categories.This study restricted the analyses to cases classified as definite, probable, possible, or suspicious by SENSOR-Pesticides and definite, probable, or possible by PISP.

We also performed analyses restricted to definite and probable cases only.Because the findings from these restricted analyses were similar to those that included all four classification categories , only the findings that used the four classification categories are reported here.In this study, a drift case was defined as acute health effects in a person exposed to pesticide drift from an outdoor agricultural application.Drift exposure included any of the following pesticide exposures outside their intended area of application: a) spray, mist, fumes, or odor during application; b) volatilization, odor from a previously treated field, or migration of contaminated dust; and c) residue left by offsite movement.Our drift definition is broader than U.S.EPA’s “spray or dust drift” definition, which excludes post application drift caused by erosion, migration, volatility, or windblown soil particles.A drift event was defined as an incident where one or more drift cases experienced drift exposure from a particular source.Both occupational and nonoccupational cases were included.An occupational case was defined as an individual exposed while at work.Among occupational cases, agricultural workers were identified using 1990 and 2002 Census Industry Codes : 1990 CICs, 010, 011, 030; 2002 CICs, 0170, 0180, 0290.Figure 1 presents the process of case selection.We selected cases if exposed to pesticides applied for agricultural use including farm, nursery, or animal production, and excluded cases exposed by ingestion, direct spray, spill, or other direct exposure.We then manually reviewed all case reports and excluded persons exposed to pesticides used for indoor applications , persons exposed within a treated area , and persons exposed to pesticides being mixed, loaded, or transported.Drift cases therefore represented the remaining 9% and 27% of all pesticide illness cases identified by the SENSOR-Pesticides and PISP, respectively.We also searched for duplicates from the two programs identifying California cases.Because personal identifiers were unavailable, date of exposure, age, sex, active ingredients, and county were used for comparison.A total of 60 events and 171 cases were identified by both California programs.These were counted only once and were included only in the PISP total.Drift events and cases were analyzed by the following variables: state, year, and month of exposure, age, sex, location of exposure, health effects, illness severity,grow bucket pesticide functional and chemical class, active ingredient, target of application, application equipment, detection of violations, and factors contributing to the drift incident.U.S.EPA toxicity categories ranging from toxicity I to IV were assigned to each product.

Cases exposed to multiple products were assigned to the toxicity category of the most toxic pesticide they were exposed to.Illness severity was categorized into low, moderate, and high using criteria developed by the SENSOR Pesticides program.Low severity refers to mild illnesses that generally resolve without treatment.Moderate severity refers to illnesses that are usually systemic and require medical treatment.High severity refers to life-threatening or serious health effects that may result in permanent impairment or disability.Contributing factors were retrospectively coded with available narrative descriptions.One NIOSH researcher initially coded contributing factors for all cases.Next, for SENSOR-Pesticides cases, state health department staff reviewed the codes and edited them as necessary.Any discrepancies were resolved by a second NIOSH researcher.For PISP cases, relatively detailed narrative descriptions were available for all incidents.These narratives summarize investigation reports provided by county agriculture commissioners, who investigate all suspected pesticide poisoning cases reported in their county.After initial coding, the two NIOSH researchers discussed those narratives that lacked clarity to reach consensus.Data analysis was performed with SAS software.Descriptive statistics were used to characterize drift events and cases.Incidence rates were calculated by geographic region, year, sex, and age group.The numerator represented the total number of respective cases in 1998–2006.Denominators were generated using the Current Population Survey micro-data files for the relevant years.For total and nonoccupational rates, the denominators were calculated by summing the annual average population estimates.A nonoccupational rate for agriculture-intensive areas was calculated by selecting the five counties in California where the largest amounts of pesticides were applied in 2008.For occupational rates, the denominators were calculated by summing the annual employment estimates including both “employed at work” and “employed but absent.” The denominator for agricultural workers was obtained using the same 1990 and 2002 CICs used to define agricultural worker cases.Moreover, in California, where data on pesticide use are available, incidence was calculated per number of agricultural applications and amount of pesticide active ingredient applied.Incidence trend over time was examined by fitting a Poisson regression model of rate on year and deriving the regression coefficient and its 95% confidence interval.Drift events were dichotomized by the size of events into small events involving < 5 cases and large events involving ≥ 5 cases.This cut point was based on one of the criteria used by the CDPR to prioritize event investigations.Illness severity was dichotomized as low and moderate/high.Simple and multi-variable logistic regressions were performed.Odds ratios and 95% CIs were calculated.To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive report of drift-related pesticide poisoning in the United States.We identified 643 events involving 2,945 illness cases associated with pesticide drift from outdoor agricultural applications during 1998–2006.Pesticide drift included pesticide spray, mist, fume, contaminated dust, volatiles, and odor that moved away from the application site during or after the application.

Although the incidence for cases involved in small drift events tended to decrease over time, the overall incidence maintained a consistent pattern chiefly driven by large drift events.Large drift events were commonly associated with soil fumigations.Occupational exposure.Occupational pesticide poisoning is estimated at 12–21 per million U.S.workers per year.Compared with those estimates, our estimated incidence of 2.89 per million worker-years suggests that 14–24% of occupational pesticide poisoning may be attributed to off-target drift from agricultural applications.Our study included pesticide drift from outdoor applications only and excluded workers exposed within the application area.Our findings show that the risk of illness resulting from drift exposure is largely borne by agricultural workers, and the incidence was 145 times greater than that for all other workers.Current regulations require agricultural employers to protect workers from exposure to agricultural pesticides, and pesticide product labels instruct applicators to avoid allowing contact with humans directly or through drift.Our study found that the incidence of drift-related pesticide poisoning was higher among female and younger agricultural workers and in western states.These groups were previously found to have a higher incidence of pesticide poisoning.It is not known why the incidence is higher among female and younger agricultural workers, but hypotheses include that these groups are at greater risk of exposure, that they are more susceptible to pesticide toxicity, or that they are more likely to report exposure and illness or seek medical attention.However, we did not observe consistent patterns among workers in other occupations.This finding requires further research to identify the explanation.

Gender harassment was reported by 30% of female crew members, of which 9% also reported unwanted sexual attention and 1% reported sexual coercion. The relative prevalence of these SH categories mirrored the pattern in prior California studies, although the rates of workers reporting SH in our study were considerably lower than the rates reported in those studies . This may be explained by regional and crop-specific differences. For example, working conditions in Napa vineyards are generally considered better than those in other agricultural sectors, with workers offered above average wages and benefits . Additionally, we considered harassment only at a worker’s current company, not throughout the worker’s overall agricultural or working career, which could have resulted in a lower reporting rate compared to previous studies. The low rates of unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion in our study were far lower than those found in other studies. Such low rates reflect well on the Napa industry, but they may also, despite the anonymity of responses, indicate a reluctance among women to admit severe harassment when participating alongside co-workers and in a study coordinated as we did this one. The small number of women reporting unwanted sexual attention or sexual coercion meant we were not able to consider an analysis of the relationship between the severity of SH with the other variables measured. Instead, we focused on two types of group comparison based on the presence or absence of SH: women reporting any type of harassment versus women reporting no harassment, and crews where SH was reported versus crews where SH was absent . We analyzed average scores or counts except for crew gender ratio, SH awareness training and relatives in crew. For these three variables, we classified female participants into additional groups based on the percentage of females in a crew, the percentage of crew members that were SH-trained and the presence or absence of relatives in a crew. Thus, female participants were assigned either to a low-female group or a high-female group and either to a low-SH-trained group or to a high-SH-trained group , using a median split.

Descriptive data for harassed and non-harassed female participants show that harassed women in our study differed on two antecedent variables. As in other industries ,what is a vertical farm harassed women were significantly younger than non-harassed women; women under 40 years of age accounted for two-thirds of reported harassment cases in our study. Second, 89% of women reporting the more severe categories of harassment were seasonal employees. More female seasonal workers than permanent workers reported gender harassment, although this relationship was not statistically significant . Harassed and non-harassed women did not differ significantly in the presence of relatives on their crews, the duration of their employment, crew size, crew gender ratio or the number of members in their crew that had received SH awareness training . Harassed women had significantly higher turnover intentions and lower overall job satisfaction compared to non-harassed women, supporting prior research on the negative impact of SH on morale and worker productivity. We compared descriptive data for SH+ and SH− crews on hostile sexism and male work outcomes. Mean scores for hostile sexism were significantly higher in SH+ crews compared to mean scores in SH− crews, supporting the theory that sexist attitudes contribute to a climate of SH tolerance . This complemented our finding of a higher incidence of gender harassment over other types of SH. The hostile sexism questionnaire can thus be considered an attitudinal measure of the behavioral gender harassment component of the SEQ, as hostile sexist attitudes appeared to be enacted as behavioral harassment towards women workers. Turnover intentions for male members of SH+ were significantly higher and job satisfaction was lower than they were for males in SH− crews. We could not determine whether dissatisfied male workers were more likely to perpetrate SH or if witnessing SH adversely affected male workers; however, the latter has previously been concluded in other research .

We identified several variables associated with the presence of SH in agricultural work crews, and we demonstrated that SH is associated with a decline in work outcomes. The type of design we employed in this study cannot verify causation between variables, only association. However, these statistical associations, together with consideration of the literature on SH in other industries, provides grounds for healthy speculation as to how agricultural companies might address SH among their workers.The oldest woman reporting SH was 47; most harassed women in this sample were 40 years or younger. Despite the lack of statistical differences in SH incidence between seasonal and permanent female workers, the severe forms of SH were overwhelmingly reported by seasonal workers. While recognizing that all workers are at risk of SH, companies should therefore be especially vigilant of the risk to young and seasonal female workers.Changing the structure of work crews is unlikely to reduce SH. In our study, harassed women worked in crews that were large and small, with or without relatives, and with considerable variation in gender ratio. Harassed women were just as likely to be working on crews with a high percentage of females as on crews with a low percentage of females . This was unexpected, as meta-analyses have demonstrated gender ratios to be a significant predictor of SH . However, the gender ratio effect may be small, and as SH occurs in a range of organizational settings , the characteristics of SH perpetrators may be more important. For example, perpetrators in male dominated workplaces tend to be co-workers, whereas perpetrators in female-dominated workplaces are more likely to be supervisors . The questionnaire we used in our study did not ask women about the perpetrators, but the unimportance of crew gender ratio indicates the possibility that SH may have originated not only from inside the crews but from outside, such as from supervisors or other company employees. Our presumption that the crew level is the most relevant company unit for SH was too optimistic. We often observed multiple crews working in the same vineyard, and they often mixed during work breaks; SH could therefore have originated from other crews, especially as the SH reported in our study was primarily verbal and gestural in nature.

Crew membership was also probably more fluid than our study design conceived. Women were asked about SH only during their current employment, but these women did not necessarily work continually in the same crew configuration. If gender ratio is an important antecedent of SH in agriculture, we predict it will be at the level of the company rather than at the level of the work team.Our results, as supported by the literature , indicate that an improvement in organizational climate is a more effective method for tackling SH than a restructuring of work crews. The hostile sexist attitude of both men and women in a crew was significantly associated with the presence of SH. Companies can expect to reduce SH by changing or neutralizing these attitudes. However, shifting these attitudes may be difficult to accomplish, as indicated by our finding that previous SH awareness training was not related to a decrease in reported SH. Similar poor efficacy of SH awareness training has been reported in prior research , suggesting that improvements are needed to the structure and administration of awareness training for agricultural workers. Unless these changes are made, other organizational climate variables, such as the internal management of complaints and the overall social climate of a company , are more likely to be effective in reducing SH. There is still value in conducting training, as it has been shown to make women more likely to report SH and it makes workers more aware of what is acceptable behavior . Since we did not collect details on which training programs the workers received, we cannot comment on the efficacy of one training program over another. Harassed females reported lower job satisfaction and higher intention to quit their jobs, illustrating that SH is likely resulting in companies losing female workers and experiencing other negative effects associated with poor worker satisfaction. The same reduced outcomes were reported by male workers in crews where harassment was occurring, suggesting that SH may be impacting not only the targets but also the co-workers. Dissatisfaction among men as a result of SH thus also has the potential to negatively affect company performance. The current study demonstrated that workplace sexual harassment of female vineyard workers affects the well being and retention of all workers in an agricultural sector where there is a paucity of quantitative data on the issue. Furthermore, this study illustrated that female workers in entry positions to the industry are most at risk of SH, illustrating that SH is a barrier for women seeking to enter the agricultural workforce. Thus, SH has the potential to significantly affect the stability of the labor pool in a time of labor shortage and to incur economic costs not only for workers but also for agricultural organizations seeking to train and retain stable work crews. Incidence of SH in our study was lower than that previously reported for farm workers, but our results should be treated with some caution; there may have been some under reporting due to our method of data collection and our relatively small sample size. This study also measured SH in one region and one crop only, and incidence rates may not generalize to other agricultural regions and sectors. Workplace policies and practices that reduce or eliminate hostile sexist attitudes appear to have the most promise for reducing SH in agriculture. However,vertical strawberries vertical system accomplishing these goals with limited resources and within a company’s traditional organizational structure may be challenging.

Future studies may seek to consider in more detail how organizational climate can be effectively addressed in the agricultural sector, the effectiveness of different SH awareness programs and the characteristics of perpetrators of SH towards women. In response to a shift toward specialization and mechanization during the 20th century, there has been momentum on the part of a vocal contingent of consumers, producers, researchers, and policy makers who call for a transition toward a new model of agriculture. This model employs fewer synthetic inputs, incorporates practices which enhance biodiversity and environmental services at local, regional, and global scales, and takes into account the social implications of production practices, market dynamics, and product mixes. Within this vision, diversified farming systems have emerged as a model that incorporates functional biodiversity at multiple temporal and spatial scales to maintain ecosystem services critical to agricultural production. This essay’s aim is to provide an economists’ perspective on the factors which make diversified farming systems economically attractive, or not-so-attractive, to farmers, and to discuss the potential for and roadblocks to widespread adoption. The essay focuses on how a range of existing and emerging factors drive profitability and adoption of DFS, and suggests that, in order for DFS to thrive, a number of structural changes are needed. These include: 1) public and private investment in the development of low-cost, practical technologies that reduce the costs of production in DFS, 2) support for and coordination of evolving markets for ecosystem services and products from DFS and 3) the elimination of subsidies and crop insurance programs that perpetuate the unsustainable production of staple crops. This work suggests that subsidies and funding be directed, instead, toward points 1) and 2), as well as toward incentives for consumption of nutritious food. Each year, more than 50,000 people in the U.S. die from hospital-acquired bacterial infections, millions experience episodes of food borne illness, and reported cases of “superbugs” such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureusand vancomyc in-resistant enterococci are on the rise. For those who acquire a resistant infection in their food, in their community, or in a hospital, resistance is associated with a longer duration of treatment, the use of more potent antibiotics, and longer hospital stays. This, in turn, means increased health care costs and costs to society due to antibiotic-resistant infections. Antibiotic resistance is contributing to the scope and severity of this health care crisis, and at least some of the responsibility for antibiotic resistance sits on the shoulders of industrial livestock production. In livestock operations, low or sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics are used to promote growth, in addition to their use to prevent and control disease. Today, more antibiotics are used in livestock production and the production of milk and eggs than in humans. While the use of sub-therapeutic doses of antibiotics is regulated less stringently in the United States than in the European Union, there is movement toward and potential for such regulation.

The implication is that increases in agricultural production have to be met through increases in agricultural productivity, and less through expansion of cultivated area. Another worsening factor is the climate change and global warming. Some studies predict that global warming will significantly and negatively affect African agriculture. They also indicate that the use of irrigation reduces the harmful impact of global warming. In addition, irrigation use is a catalyst of improved technology adoption, which will have a substantial impact on food security.The author’s understanding of food security is informed by Sen’s entitlement theory. Farmer’s access to food can be seized either through the output markets or through increases in productivity levels and improvements in food storage. As elicited by the “sell low, buy high” puzzle, the mark-up is usually very high and a significant number of households in rural Mozambique may not afford to purchase food during the lean season. Therefore, it becomes crucial to enhance both agricultural productivity and farmer’s ability to store food. Selective mechanization, improved storage, and other improved agricultural technologies play an essential role in ensuring farmers’ food entitlements. Previous attempts to mechanize the agricultural sector in the post-colonial period have failed, one of the reasons being the 16-year civil war that started a year after the independence in 1975. Moreover, the government established tractor-hire schemes had serious planning,vertical grow shelf management, and training problems, denting the image of agricultural mechanization in general. Agricultural mechanization is also mistakenly perceived as tractor mechanization.

This includes the use of tractors, animal-powered and human-powered implements and tools , as well as irrigation systems, food processing and related technologies and equipment. Although not addressed in this paper, the use of jab planters has been shown to significantly reduce labor requirements. Information on the economic impact of selected improved agricultural technologies is needed to target interventions efficiently and equitably, and to justify investment in such technologies.This paper assesses the impact of improved agricultural technologies by constructing a counterfactual comparison group. In this setting, a comparison of the outcome variable is made between farmers using a given technology and their counterparts with similar observable co-variates .The use of tractor mechanization is significantly correlated with road infrastructure. The distance to the nearest tarred road is three times higher among households who did not use tractors, relative to their counterparts. Remarkably, among the 2 percent of the population that used a tractor, 49 percent accrues to Maputo province, and 32 percent to Gaza province, both located in the south, a region of relatively lower agricultural potential, but of better road infrastructure. The remaining 19 percent are distributed across the other 8 provinces, which includes agro-ecological zones of higher agricultural potential, but relatively poorer road infrastructure. Unsurprisingly, adoption rates rise with increases in both landholding size and livestock flocks for all four improved technologies. Households with larger landholdings will potentially have higher production and thus feel compelled to invest in improved granaries. The use of animal traction or tractor mechanization is also cost-effective in larger fields. Additionally, the adoption of animal traction and tractor mechanization require some initial investment, and asset endowment is positively and significantly correlated with household welfare.

With regard to access to credit, the difference between treated and untreated households was only significant for the adoption of tractor mechanization, and marginally significant for the use of animal traction. This result, however, is an artifact of a low data variation as not many households could access the emerging rural credit market. Furthermore, a tractor can be used as collateral, a bottleneck for many rural households in accessing to the credit market. Membership to farmers’ association is also significantly correlated with the use of improved agricultural technologies. The number of farmers using tractor mechanization is three times higher among members of an association. Similarly, there are twice as many farmers using improved seeds among members of a farmers’ association.Figures 1A through 4A show the distribution of propensity scores for all four technologies. Treated and untreated households overlap very well, suggesting that the overlap assumption is plausible. Additionally, the assessment of the overlap assumption was complemented by the analysis of normalized differences. The results are presented in Table 2, and they show that normalized differences are in general smaller than 0.25 . Exceptions are the variables on head’s age and tropical livestock units. However, this outcome did not affect the estimation results because these two variables were dropped from the stepwise logit model due to their low explanatory power. The results on the stepwise logit model are not reported to save space, but are available from the author upon request.Table 4 presents the estimation results of the impact of selected improved agricultural technologies, contrasting the results obtained through three econometric approaches. With the exception of animal traction, the impact of improved agricultural technologies is consistently positive and significantly different zero. The impact is greater for tractor mechanization, followed by the use of improved seeds, and finally the use of improved granaries. Farmers that used animal traction and experienced losses in 2004/05 agricultural season may be enticed to abandon such technology, especially if they rented the animals and the implements. This is probably one of the reasons why “adoption rates” of improved agricultural technologies are usually very low: some farmers abandon the technology after some unsuccessful adoption attempts. Policies to sustain adoption of improved agricultural technologies should be put in place. Irrigation investments fall in that category.The significance of improved granaries underscores the relevance of post-harvest losses, and reducing these losses potentially results in higher household income in light of opportunities for inter-temporal price arbitrage; and improved food entitlements and farmer’s nutritional status. The author speculates that the benefits from an improved granary might outstrip by far its construction costs, considering that it will be used for more than a year.

The impact of improved seeds on maize is about 2 000 Meticais/ha, and 5 180 Meticais/ha for tractor mechanization . The estimates of the impact can also be regarded as shadow prices. Specifically, during the 2004/05 agricultural season, the use of tractor mechanization would be profitable for the farmer whenever the market cost of hiring a tractor was below $212/ha. Likewise, the market price of improved maize seeds required to sow 1 hectare of maize should be lower than $80. Taking into account that mean household income in 2004/05 was about $137 per adult equivalent , and that less than 5 percent had access to credit, understanding why adoption of improved technologies is extremely low becomes trivial. Even if improved agricultural technologies were riskless, a bulk of farmers would not be financially capable of investing in such technologies, much less irrigation. There is certainly an ample scope to enhance the impact of improved seeds and tractor mechanization, considering that less than 5 percent use irrigation or inorganic fertilizers, and about half of the tractors used in Mozambique are located in Maputo province, and more than 3/4 of all tractors are located in the south. If the Mozambican government wants to achieve the much talked-about green revolution, then huge investments on basic infrastructure and irrigation may pave the way for higher adoption rates and profitability of improved agricultural technologies. The bad news is that climate change and global warming is a translucent reality, potentially with severe implications to African agriculture. In the Mozambican agriculture context, the implication is that any effort to foster adoption of animal traction, improved seeds, tractors, and other improved technologies should be accompanied by investments on irrigation or water conservation technologies. Furthermore, drought-tolerant improved seeds will also significantly increase both agricultural production and productivity amidst low irrigation use and recurrent drought spells across the country.Hundreds of reports and articles begin with a variation on the same apocalyptic exhortation: The combination of population growth, food price volatility,vertical hydroponic and climate change demands a new agricultural revolution to expand and secure the global food supply. The bio-technologies frst deployed in the Green Revolution are still being constantly improved; food prices, however, stay stubbornly high and many fear a yield plateau. The new revolution, they argue, is digital technology. In a recent article about the use of artifcial intelligence in agriculture, for example, Wired gushed about “an explosion in advanced agricultural technology, which Goldman Sachs predicts will raise crop yields 70 percent by 2050” . Goldman, for their part, estimate that digital agricultural technologies will become a $240 billion market by 2050 . X, Google’s “moonshot” venture, recently hailed the arrival of “the era of computational agriculture” . Traditional agribusinesses have found themselves competing with Silicon Valley giants, venture capitalists, scrappy startups, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations , and research institutions to develop and market a dizzying array of new technologies to feed “the next two billion” and save the world. “Digital agriculture” is a heterogeneous suite of information-rich, computationally-complex, and often capital-intensive methods for improving the efficiency of agricultural land and the profit margins of sectoral actors.

Digital technologies have come to play a role in every stage of the agricultural cycle under capitalism, from input management to marketing produce, pricing commodities futures to pest control. However, while it is true that these technologies increase efficiency, we contest the notion that they will provide a long-term solution to the looming crises of the global food system. For what the narrative of an agricultural techno-revolution elides is how the methods of industrialized food production create these challenges in the frst place. We interpret the rise of digital technologies in agriculture as the continuation of a process dating back to the Green Revolution, namely, to reconfigure agrarian life in a manner amenable to increased profits, especially for actors further up the value chain. For the proponents of digital agriculture, the transition is between two technologically-paved pathways to profit: innovations in high dimensional computing supersede innovations in breeding. A purely technological perspective is insufficient and depoliticizes analyses of far-reaching changes to agricultural production, changes which have an effect on the rest of the capitalist economy . Nevertheless, this has not stopped digital agriculture’s boosters from frequently claiming that it heralds a “fourth agricultural revolution.”1 However, digital agriculture has received limited critical attention from social scientists. The vast majority of critical work on the ascendancy of global technology mega-firms and new information-centric accumulation strategies looks at their effects in non-agrarian industrial and service sectors. However, the generation of profits in these sectors depends in part on keeping inputs for production and reproduction— like food—artifcially cheap . By perpetuating an unsustainable regime of cheap food, digital agriculture technologies support the continued expansion of an equally unsustainable global urban system.We argue that the rise of digital agriculture is emblematic of an intensifying relationship between zones of agrarian production and extraction on the one hand, and zones of agglomeration, industrial production, and service provision on the other. A body of neo-Lefebvrian scholarship describes these apparently distinct zones as co-constitutive, entangled in a dialectic of extended and concentrated urbanization . In this framework, the growth imperative of capitalism requires the transformation of vast landscapes beyond the ‘city’ to increase extraction and agricultural output, the product of which is drawn back inward to fuel growth. In this reading, the socio-metabolic process of urbanization is increasingly generalized, to the point that some have argued for thinking of contemporary urbanization as a ‘planetary’ process. With this in mind, this article interrogates the political economy of digital agriculture and reinterprets the digitalization of the food system through the lens of extended–concentrated urbanization. We begin by introducing digital agriculture and the limited social scientific literature on the topic. Next, we critique the mainstream rhetoric surrounding digital agriculture, which makes a Malthusian argument for the need to feed a burgeoning global population in the face of climate change. Then, beginning from the observation that the crucial role of information is under-analyzed in the extended–concentrated urbanization framework, we build a theoretical argument for how digital agriculture challenges the urban–rural binarism. We locate the framework’s origins as a reaction to earlier threads of globalization theory, which emphasized the supposedly immaterial nature and deterritorializing effects of information and communications technologies .