<aside> ⬆️ back to The ecosystem of 'social agriculture'

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In this section:

What is 'social agriculture'?

We are observing a rapid surge in activity on social media platforms coming from farmers and others working in agriculture around the world, specifically in countries with a high proportion of the workforce in agriculture. We term this phenomenon 'social agriculture' and define it in the following way:

<aside> ▪️ Social agriculture refers to a set of practices that support agricultural livelihoods — agricultural information exchange, agricultural support mechanisms and agricultural markets — based on the use of social media platforms in countries with a high proportion of their workforce in agriculture

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Three key aspects of 'social agriculture'

We conducted a detailed literature review and pulled together stories and examples of practices around the world relating to 'social agriculture'. We found three distinct sets of practices that make up this new and rapidly growing phenomenon.

Aspects

Some further notes on 'social agriculture'

With an outline of the concept of 'social agriculture' in view, it's worth stressing a few further points about our understanding of this phenomenon.

  1. We stress the term 'livelihoods' insofar as this comprises the capabilities, material and social resources, and activities required for a person working in agriculture. We aren't simply concerned with the way social media supports commercial interactions within the agriculture sector.
  2. We are using a broad sense of "social media" which describes a set of digital platforms that allow users to create and exchange information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. This covers services like Facebook, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, etc.
  3. We stress that many of the interesting practices we describe tend to unintentionally arise from the infrastructure and logic of social media platforms themselves. In other words, individuals working in agricultural are often re-purposing existing platform features to try and achieve the intended 'ends' of social agriculture, i.e. information exchange, buying/selling, etc.