Agriculture is threatened by global warming, while its yields are afected by it. Information and communication technology (ICT) is often considered as a potential lever to mitigate this tension, through monitoring and process optimization. However, while agricultural ICT is actively promoted, its environmental impact appears to be overlooked. Possible rebound efects could put at stake its net expected benefits and hamper agriculture sustainability. By adapting environmental footprint assessment methods to digital agriculture context, this research aims at defining a methodology taking into account the environmental footprint of agricultural ICT systems and their required infrastructures. The expected contribution is to propose present and prospective models based on possible digitalization scenarios, in order to assess efects and consequences of diferent technological paths on agriculture sustainability, suficiency and resilience. The final results could be useful to enlighten societal debates and political decisions.
fairer and more sustainable food are still debated. According to [
If digital agriculture might be seen as a sustainable solution, the environmental footprint linked to ICT seems rarely considered by itself. Yet, ICT device manufacturing has a significant environmental footprint [12], and a global adoption of digital agriculture could lead to a massive deployment of complex electronic devices in the environment. This situation would not be sustainable following the conclusions of [13] regarding IoT, as it could cause digital rebounds [14] at a scale cancelling the expected benefits of digital agriculture.
In this context, by considering the peculiar environmental footprint of the ICT needed by digital agriculture and the possible rebound efects it could generate, it seems relevant to ask what kind of ICT, deployed to which scales, and for which agricultural systems could bring a certain sustainability, without threatening the suficiency and the resilience also required by agricultural systems.
The main goal of this research is to set up of a methodology taking into account the environmental footprint of agricultural ICT systems, and their consequences on a systemic scale. This methodology should help us to develop present and prospective models and scenarios, in order to evaluate and compare possible technological paths. The obtained results are expected to enlighten societal debates and political decisions.
Currently at its earlier stage, this research in Computer Science is conducted at the Laboratoire Bordelais de Recherche en Informatique (LaBRI), under the supervision of Aurélie Bugeau (LaBRI), Gaël Guennebaud (Inria) and Anne-Laure Ligozat (LISN). It is realized in the Image and Sound department, because of the current disciplinary fields of its supervision, but also because of the lack of an ICT sustainability department.
Our general methodology is inspired by the works of [15] and [16]. It is adapted to the farm
complexity, where several companies can propose several ICT services working on a same
territory. This while calling for diferent infrastructures not always interoperable. The goal of
this methodology is to lead to the creation of parametric models able to inform decisions on
the adoption of digital agriculture paths. Those models aim to go beyond individual life cycle
assessment (LCA) studies to provide more systemic visions at diferent territorial scales. To
adopt a more systemic approach implies broadening the environmental impact spectrum by
looking at more indicators than carbon emissions and energy consumption indicators. Relevant
additional indicators could be water consumption or potential metallic depletion linked to
ICT infrastructures. Such models could help characterize absolute environmental impacts of
digital agriculture systems and few associated indirect efects. The main steps of the proposed
methodology are the definition of a baseline and its boundaries, the identification of relevant
case studies and the efect assessment of possible prospective trends. Whether the digitization
of agriculture being a matter of growing interest, this trend is far from being new according to
[
The boundaries definition enables us to define the ICT infrastructures taken into account, the territory and the agricultural systems and steps where they are being deployed as well as the temporal perspective where they can evolve. Because diferent ICT systems can be used to address a same issue, we adopt a functionalist approach to compare diferent ICT systems addressing a same function. Approaching digital ICT by functions enables us to consider complex systems of embedded diferent technologies interacting to solve a same function instead of isolated technologies. This complex approach seems to better reflect systems like those presented by the works of [18] and [19]. Looking at the ICT infrastructures required by a system to realize a function firstly gives us the possibility to assess its environmental impact magnitudes. It also gives us a way to consider the diferent functions a same ICT infrastructure is expected to address.
The thesis started in October 2022. A first work consisted in a global synthesis to discover the multiplicity behind digital agriculture systems. A first use case dedicated to cattle individual identification and health metrics systems is currently realized to build and test our general methodology. We also conducted field surveys on a farm and at agricultural events to characterize current and expected trends of agricultural ICT.
In the near future, we aim to propose a first model comparing and RFID plus IoT system with one using AI and computer vision. This model will address two complementary functions regarding AI infrastructure possibilities, which are individual identification and health metrics. To do so, our preliminary work needs to be enriched with IoT collars. Then, we would like to consider culture spraying in order to test the conceptualized method on another use case.
Environmental metrics linked to software processes will need to be considered. If current systems mainly focus on edge computing, our field studies showed that a future trend for digital agriculture companies is to externalize computing to owned cloud platforms.
In the long time, we plan to compare our 2025 baselines to diferent 2035 scenarios, proposing
diferent technical systems scales. Those scenarios will be inspired by the European commission
plans [
Our research aims to propose methods and models to better assess the environmental footprint of digital agriculture systems. Filling this current gap directly contributes to a better understanding of how ICT can help to mitigate the uncertainties between climate change and agriculture. To do so, we will rely on and adapt to the context of agriculture methods used in ICT environmental efects assessments. Participating to ICT4S doctoral symposium is an opportunity to present our research to people concerned by the role that can play ICT in sustainability. Presenting our work there would be the occasion for us to formalize them toward an initiated audience, and to get from it external yet relevant feedback. of Rural Studies 86 (2021) 599–610. URL: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/ S0743016721002205. doi:1 0 . 1 0 1 6 / j . j r u r s t u d . 2 0 2 1 . 0 7 . 0 2 3 . [9] V. Bellon Maurel, F. Garcia, L. Brossard, N. Mitton, A. Termier, Agriculture et numérique Livre Blanc INRIA- INRAE : Tirer le meilleur du numérique pour contribuer à la transition vers des agricultures et des systèmes alimentaires durables (2022). URL: https://hal.inrae. fr/hal-03596682. doi:1 0 . 1 7 1 8 0 / W M K B - T Y 5 6 , publisher: INRIA-INRAE. [10] A. Hilbeck, H. McCarrick, E. Tisselli, J. Pohl, D. Kleine, Aligning digitalization with agroecological principles to support a transformation agenda (2022). URL: https://depositonce. tu-berlin.de/handle/11303/17687. doi:1 0 . 1 4 2 7 9 / D E P O S I T O N C E - 1 6 4 7 2 , publisher: Technische Universität Berlin. [11] A. R. Davies, Co-creating sustainable eating futures: Technology, ICT and citizen–consumer ambivalence, Futures 62 (2014) 181–193. URL: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/ retrieve/pii/S0016328714000688. doi:1 0 . 1 0 1 6 / j . f u t u r e s . 2 0 1 4 . 0 4 . 0 0 6 . [12] C. Freitag, M. Berners-Lee, K. Widdicks, B. Knowles, G. S. Blair, A. Friday, The real climate and transformative impact of ICT: A critique of estimates, trends, and regulations, Patterns 2 (2021) 100340. URL: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S2666389921001884. doi:1 0 . 1 0 1 6 / j . p a t t e r . 2 0 2 1 . 1 0 0 3 4 0 . [13] T. Pirson, D. Bol, Assessing the embodied carbon footprint of IoT edge devices with a bottom-up life-cycle approach, Journal of Cleaner Production 322 (2021) 128966. URL: https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0959652621031577. doi:1 0 . 1 0 1 6 / j . j c l e p r o . 2 0 2 1 . 1 2 8 9 6 6 . [14] V. Coroama, F. Mattern, Digital Rebound – Why Digitalization Will Not Redeem Us Our
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