Maaz Gardezi

Virginia Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) | VT · Department of Sociology

In industrialized societies, techno-optimism is a belief that human ingenuity, through improved science and technology, will ultimately provide remedies to most current and future threats to human well-being, such as diseases, climate change, and poverty. Here we examine (a) whether techno-optimism is found among Midwestern corn and soybean farmers...

Precision agriculture (PA) is restructuring farmer livelihoods and identities through a panoply of technologies that generate and process big data to influence agricultural practices. In this paper, we ask the question: How does algorithmic rationality impact farmers' trust in PA? We focus on the modalities of power wielded by agritech firms throug...

Extant systematic literature reviews on the topic of climate smart agriculture (CSA) have mainly focused on two issues: reviewing framing of the CSA discourse in the academic and policy literature; and policy initiatives in the Global South that enhance the adoption of climate‐smart agricultural practices. Yet, there is little systematic investigat...

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an important discourse among national governments in Africa and international policy circles to increase food productivity, build smallholder farmers’ resilience to climate change, and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Despite presenting several potential economic and environmental benefits to farmers, its adopti...

Emerging technologies in food and energy systems present unique problems of resource governance. Here, we present distinct case studies to examine two emerging technologies in energy and food systems; solar parks in India and precision agriculture technologies in the US. We ask the following question: How do existing modes of governance of new and...

Precision agriculture (PA) has been defined as a “management strategy that gathers, processes and analyzes temporal, spatial and individual data and combines it with other information to support management decisions according to estimated variability for improved resource use efficiency, productivity, quality, profitability and sustainability of ag...

This review systematically traces the context and evolution of climate-smart irrigation (CSI) in four South Asian countries-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. CSI technologies and practices strive to address two main objectives: (1) sustainably enhance agricultural/water productivity and rural farm incomes to build community and farm-level res...

In this paper, we examine the interactions, decisions, and evaluations of an interdisciplinary team of researchers tasked with developing an intelligent (AI-based) agricultural decision support system (DSS) that can provide farmers site-specific information about managing nutrients on their land. By doing so, we answer the following research questi...

The use of intelligent decision support systems (DSS) in precision farming provides an opportunity to improve agricultural recommendations and reduce the impacts of agriculture on the environment. Despite the benefits offered by DDS, many farmers remain skeptical of using these hardware and software tools, and their adoption rates have remained low...

Artificial intelligence (AI) represents technologies with human‐like cognitive abilities to learn, perform, and make decisions. AI in precision agriculture (PA) enables farmers and farm managers to deploy highly targeted and precise farming practices based on site‐specific agroclimatic field measurements. The foundational and applied development of...

Advances in precision agriculture (PA), driven by big data technologies and machine learning algorithms can transform agriculture by enhancing crop and livestock productivity and supporting faster and more accurate on and off-farm decision making. However, little is known about how PA can influence farmers’ sense of self, their skills and competenc...

Agricultural decision support systems (DSSs) are hardware and software tools that utilize big data collected from satellites and drones, ground-based sensors, and analyzed with machine learning algorithms to provide site-specific farming recommendations. Despite the promise of DSSs to address many challenges of the farm economy, there are social an...

Despite the proliferation of power approaches to study climate change, there is little focus on how to deal with the negative effects of power in climate change adaptation (CCA) policy-making. CCA literature provides little insight into understandings of manifestations of power that can create negative effects, especially in the context of South As...

Precision agriculture is an assemblage of data-driven agricultural technologies, discursively articulated as a clever gambit against climate-induced food insecurity. Agritech companies engage in data grabbing as an accumulation strategy and to influence farmers’ behaviors, opening new agrarian frontiers for surveillance capitalism. Wielding big dat...

Precision agricultural technologies (PA) such as global positioning system tools have been commercially available since the early 1990s and they are widely thought to have environmental and economic benefit; however, adoption studies show uneven adoption among farmers in the U.S. and Europe. This study aims to tackle a lingering puzzle regarding wh...

Cover crops are grown between periods of regular crop production or planted into crops with the primary purpose of protecting and improving soil health. These crops possess several resilience-enhancing properties that are well-suited to help farmers adapt to climate change. Through an “adaptive capacities framework”, we examine how farmers' adaptiv...

Global climate change is a serious threat to agrarian societies in the Global South. Previous research has examined the discourse on poverty and climate vulnerability, development and growth, and combating climatic risks. However, there has been no concerted effort to understand these discourses in a holistic manner. Thus, limited attention has bee...

Community risk perceptions can influence their abilities to cope with coastal hazards such as hurricanes and coastal flooding.Our study presents an initial effort to examine the relationship between community resilience and risk perception at the county level, through innovative construction of aggregate variables. Utilizing the 2012 Gulf Coast Cli...

Potential climate-change-related impacts to agriculture in the upper Midwest pose serious economic and ecological risks to the U.S. and the global economy. On a local level, farmers are at the forefront of responding to the impacts of climate change. Hence, it is important to understand how farmers and their farm operations may be more or less vuln...

Public agencies, such as agricultural extension have traditionally played a crucial role in transferring and diffusing information on Best Management Practices (BMPs) from research universities and experiment stations to farmers. They have also been instrumental in targeting incentives to facilitate farmers??? adoption of BMPs, which is critic...