The book Ecologization and Digitalization of Agriculture: Convergence or Opposition? aims to contribute to this debate by moving beyond rhetoric and promises to examine the representations, uses, and transformations of practices brought about by the development of digital technology in the agricultural sector.

The first part presents an empirical and scientific overview of the issue of digital technology in agriculture. After a historical detour examining the evolution of agriculture since the end of World War II, this section demonstrates that, far from being limited to the introduction of a new tool into a system, the development of digital technology is a multidimensional transformation: transformations of actors, institutions, public policies, and practices on farms. These transformations raise a range of controversies regarding whether or not these changes accompany the ecological transformation of the agricultural sector. A review of the scientific literature on the subject highlights the various components that must be taken into account to analyze these transformations in all their complexity. It thus calls for a systemic study of these phenomena, incorporating multiple scales of analysis and accounting for the internal heterogeneity within the agricultural sector, which is too often overlooked.

The second part consists of an analysis of the links between digital development and ecological agriculture, based on the perceptions, practices, and projects of actors on the ground. This part examines the ongoing digitalization of the agricultural sector in its various dimensions: reflections by agricultural organizations, implementation of public policies, collaborations between digital and agricultural actors, uses of digital technology on farms, and experiments within cooperatives. It thus illustrates the positions of actors in these transformations and their practices, presenting innovation not as an exogenous process that disrupts the agricultural sector, but rather as a complex, multidimensional process that shapes and is shaped by the actors. An analysis of the perceptions and implications of organizations within the agricultural innovation system reveals that, depending on the type of ecological agriculture promoted by the actors, their expectations, their perceptions of risks, and their digital strategies differ. This diversity is largely overlooked by digital actors, suggesting a risk that digital technologies may be developed solely according to the expectations and needs of the dominant agricultural paradigm. A study on farmers’ uses and perceptions highlights the diversity of digital usage profiles. The most significant uses of digital technology are primarily found on more industrialized farms. Ecological practices associated with digital technology are largely limited to practices of justification or optimization rather than deeper ecological transformation. However, digital tools offer capabilities for accessing and exchanging knowledge that can provide a valuable complement to more traditional knowledge-sharing spaces such as farmers’ associations. Cooperatives, acting as intermediaries between production and downstream sectors, and between producers and other organizations within the agricultural innovation system, strive to articulate a set of standards: environmental, regulatory, commercial, and so on. Digital technology is thus sometimes used to manage the growing complexity of supply chains that are diversifying and becoming more segmented, but it is primarily driven by downstream requirements rather than ecological concerns.

The final section of the book highlights and brings together all the empirical elements presented throughout to discuss the links between digital technology and ecological agriculture. It demonstrates that the development of digital technology in agriculture depends on the diversity of models and paradigms, interacting with a socioeconomic system that proposes, encourages, or even imposes a technological trajectory. The digital trajectory in agriculture reveals several forms of opposition to a strong ecological agriculture, whether in terms of technology, objectives, reasoning, temporal dynamics, or political and social issues. Hybrid approaches, however, appear possible for industrialized ecological agriculture, or through a more comprehensive reimagining of digital technology, by rethinking its technical, economic, and political models.

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