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The digitization of the agricultural sector is connected with a number of promises that have been widely debated in both the public and the academic spheres. But attention has been mainly focused on farm production or management techniques, often neglecting the realm of governance, which has also begun a digital transformation. This article explores the premises of an informational model of governance and the integration of a logic of big data into agri-environmental governance in Switzerland. More specifically, it examines this process from the perspective of the autonomy of the farmers, by looking more specifically at how these changes in governance create or not possibilities for farmer autonomization, in terms of identity, action, and structures. In spite of some discourses that present digitization as a tool to lighten administrative constraints and a way to aid in the independent management of agricultural activity, our analysis reveals a more qualified picture: at the present time, digitization reinforces the bureaucratic approach to governance, and the contribution of digital technologies to the interests of the farmers themselves remains minimal. In conclusion, it appears that the accent that has been placed on the service done for farmers is primarily part of a rhetoric aimed at encouraging involvement, and that rhetoric contributes to making other interests, which are more central to the constitution of an informational governance model, invisible. • Agri-environmental monitoring has accelerated with the development of digital tools. • Most of the existing agri-environmental monitoring remains based on "small data". • There are clear signs of increasing bureaucratic rationales through the digitization of governance instruments. • The perceived risks of farmers dependence on key actors are not counterbalanced by clear prospects of autonomization. • The digitization of agri-environmental governance is guided by interests other than those of the farmers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Certification and standards are key instruments to implement accountability in the contemporary governance of food systems. They are based on the idea that, thanks to the creation and circulation of information, promises to consumers are kept in increasingly complex value chains. However, critical examinations also describe it as a symptom of an ongoing globalisation and neoliberalisation, shifting power from the state to market actors, in particular retailers and supermarkets. This paper offers a new perspective on accountability within the tripartite standards regime, inspired by an assemblage approach and focusing on power relations and knowledge creation, as fundamental dimensions. The example of IP-Suisse, a Swiss farmer organisation and a food label, allows us to identify multiple contradictory power and knowledge processes that are simultaneously unfolding within the agri-environmental governance assemblage. Beyond the expected dominance of powerful actors (particularly retailers) and the relentless bureaucratisation of governance, more positive processes also emerge, including a collective empowerment of farmers and the realization of cumulative and progressive learning through new collaborations and experiments. The assemblage approach suggests that the point is not so much to invent a new blueprint for better accountability practices, but rather to understand the specific processes taking place within a given AEG assemblage and then to encourage the creation of new alliances to strengthen those processes that are most likely to foster experimentation and knowledge. It thereby obliges us to take the multiplicity of transformational processes seriously, as a starting point for developing innovative accountability practices. • Accountability practices are better understood when considered through their relations to a broader governance assemblage. • Power and knowledge are central dimensions that define accountability practices and are also defined by them. • Information in accountability can result in farmers' empowerment but can also strengthen existing relation of domination. • The centrality of administrative knowledge overshadows the emergence of new ways of knowing food and agriculture. • Accountability can help experimentation, alliances, and learning processes for more sustainable food systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moving forwards from an extensive literature on farmers' cooperatives, this Special Issue aims to explore the interaction and interdependence of multiple material and immaterial benefits associated with cooperation. The eight papers gathered here address a range of contexts to explore the inseparability of a set of ‘more-than-economic’ benefits of cooperation and consider the wider implications of viewing cooperation in such light. Responding to their insights, this editorial reflects upon the ontological ambiguity of concepts of economy and the political potentiality of cooperative activities. In addition, we highlight three key themes raised by the papers, which emphasize the complexity of processes and values included in cooperation: Relatedness and Embeddedness; Institutions and Formalisation; Histories and Futures. Reflecting on the transformative capacities of cooperation described in this collection, we argue that valuing cooperation as a process rather than a means to fixed-ends can carry its own emancipatory potential, given the ways in which this can work to counter the compartmentalising tendencies of capitalism. However, we conclude by cautioning that the addressing of more pervasive structural impediments needs to be integrated into cooperative endeavours if such potential is to be fully realised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After the abolition of milk quotas in Switzerland, dairy farmers had to reorganise. New farmers' organisations emerged and traditional co-operatives had to search for strategies at multiple levels (markets, membership, services provision, and diversification) to strengthen their position. In this ethnographic study, we analyse three central co-operative values – democracy, solidarity, autonomy – and their translation and development within the adaptation strategies developed by five farmers' organisations. Despite the many challenges to co-operative values related to a context of market deregulation, the new strategies developed demonstrate the continued importance and rejuvenation of these co-operative values as narratives and practices. In addition, results show a blurring of boundaries between organisations of different kinds (specifically co-operatives and public limited companies) and overlaps in the strategies employed by both (including new forms of collaboration and marketing). Whilst these emerging forms, and the associated strategies and values embodied, could be read as the hybridization of a traditional co-operative approach, we argue that the concept of hybridity unduly polarises co-operatives and corporates in a way that does not acknowledge the implicit plurality of motivations and behaviours in all forms of business structure. Consequently, the paper argues that looking at the practices of co-operation, beyond rigid categories, helps to understand better how co-operative values are actually enacted within farmers’ organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The struggle over autonomy in farming is emblematic of the philosophical and practical tensions inherent in solving multi-scalar environmental issues. We explore the multiplicities of autonomy through comparative case studies of agricultural cooperation in England, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Brazil, which allow consideration of the implications of a range of approaches to managing farmed environments under different variations of neoliberalism. The original data emerge from separate projects examining aspects of cooperative autonomy in relation to the effects of the neoliberalisation of nature in agriculture. The comparative examination of autonomy and cooperation across distinct agri-food contexts highlights diversity in the social, ecological and economic outcomes of alternative forms of agri-environmental governance. This analysis provides a sobering corrective to both the over-romanticization of cooperation across global peasant movements and the over-romanticization of the individual entrepreneur in agro-industrial and family farming sectors. Our examination highlights the need for greater attention to the relationships between actors at and across different scales (the farm level, organizations and communities, the state, and industry) to understand how, in contrasting contexts of neoliberalisation, alternative conceptions of autonomy serve to mediate particular interventions and their material environmental consequences. A focus on actual autonomy, via the peasant principle and territorial cooperatives, creates an opening in theoretical and political dialogue to bridge concerns about farmers, livelihoods, and environmental outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on interviews in Switzerland and New Zealand, we explore the concept of autonomy as part of a farming self. The farming self encompasses the dialectical relationship of autonomy as both value and tool that help us understand farmers within a wider set of economic, environmental and interpersonal relations. Farmers describe autonomy as a value in three related but slightly different ways. First, autonomy invokes a particular lifestyle connected to farming. Second, autonomy is understood as the equivalent of being one's own boss. Third, farmers describe autonomy negatively by enumerating the constraints that limit the first two iterations of autonomy in their farming operations. Beyond the value of autonomy for farmer identity, the farming self captures autonomy as a tool: a tool of identification, a tool to mitigate, navigate and translate the experiences of being a farmer in a wider network of agricultural relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]