Old Questions:
- Descriptive: How do past trends in agriculture inform future innovations? What does successful implementation of AgTech look like? How are specific, successful AgTech innovations currently being implemented and what key characteristics do they share? What are the best ways to market AgTech innovations? What are the social and political drawbacks to many current innovations?
- Explanatory: Why are agricultural innovations difficult to implement? Why is AgTech important for the future of agriculture?
- Evaluative: What role should technology play in creating the food we consume? Is there an ethical line that should not be crossed?
- Instrumental: How can entrepreneurial and other methods be used to better implement AgTech innovations?
These questions served my concentration proposal, but I was never really comfortable them. My descriptive questions covered several perspectives, but they were too vague and all over the place. Spawning from the history of agriculture to marketing strategies, there was no way I could answer all these questions. To fix this, I got rid of the marketing question, added more detail to the successful implementation question, and took out the ‘social and political’ name-dropping. Also, generally throughout these questions I tried to emphasize my changing interest in technological innovation over agriculture.
My original explanatory questions were perhaps worst of all. My first question makes a big assumption in that AgTech is somehow inherently difficult to implement and my second question takes my obvious and value-laden opinion on AgTech and assumes it true, making this sound like an agenda. To fix this I got rid of the second question and explained what I was trying to get at with the first question. I’m still not super happy with the updated because it assumes a tension does exist, but it is a step in the right direction.
The evaluative questions were better, but I felt they focused too much on the ethics of AgTech, with a hidden assumption that ethics holds a significant weight in people choosing whether or not to use technology. And while this may be the case for GMOs or cloned meat, people are much less ethically concerned with most other technologies. To fix this I replaced the second question with one looking for the point where AgTech no longer makes economic, political, or ethical sense to implement.
Finally in my instrumental questions, I added policy making to the list of methods to implement AgTech. I also added how to better foster AgTech innovation as inspired by my Technologies of the Future class.
Updated Questions:
- Descriptive: How do past trends in technology and agriculture inform future innovation? In a sphere as large and diverse as agriculture, what does successful implementation of technology look like? What are the drawbacks to many current innovations?
- Explanatory: Why is there tension between agriculture, society, and technology? What barriers arise from this?
- Evaluative: What role should technology play in creating the food we consume? Where is an ethical, political, or economic point where AgTech no longer makes sense to implement?
- Instrumental: How can entrepreneurship, policy making, or other methods be used to better foster and implement AgTech innovation?