Transparent Farmers: how farmers are using technology for new ways of selling and communicating with consumers

12 pages•Published: May 10, 2018

Abstract

There is a growing number of farmers embracing information and communication technologies (ICT) as a way of enabling direct sales to consumers and creating added value through involving the consumers and making food production more transparent. This article presents the case of Nybrukarna, a community supported agriculture (CSA) cooperative in the south of Sweden, and explores how social media is used in their operation. The social media posts during a growing season were analyzed and used to identify different cases. Three main themes were identified: (1) practical communication and feedback from customers; (2) increasing transparency of crop production and values; (3) marketing and direct sales. These results were combined with information from a survey with feedback of the CSA customers, and a survey with growers in similar context, for identifying and discussing challenges, drivers, and opportunities for future development and research.

Keyphrases: csa, farming, food, social media, transparency

In: Birgit Penzenstadler, Steve Easterbrook, Colin Venters and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed (editors). ICT4S2018. 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainability, vol 52, pages 398-409.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/DWMK
	https://doi.org/10.29007/fmhh

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{ICT4S2018:Transparent_Farmers_how_farmers,
  author    = {Jorge Luis Zapico and Maja Söderberg},
  title     = {Transparent Farmers: how farmers are using technology for new ways of selling and communicating with consumers},
  booktitle = {ICT4S2018. 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for Sustainability},
  editor    = {Birgit Penzenstadler and Steve Easterbrook and Colin Venters and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Computing},
  volume    = {52},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-7340},
  url       = {/publications/paper/DWMK},
  doi       = {10.29007/fmhh},
  pages     = {398-409},
  year      = {2018}}

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