Abstract
China’s sustainable development goals and carbon neutrality targets cannot be achieved without revolutionary transitions of the agricultural sector. The rapid development of digital technologies is believed to play a huge role in this revolution. The ongoing prevention and control of COVID-19 has greatly boosted the penetration of digital technology services in all areas of society, and sustainable transformation driven by digital technologies and services is rapidly becoming an area of innovation and research. Studies have shown that the rapid advancement of digitalization is also accompanied by a series of new governance challenges and problems: (1) unclear strategic orientation and inadequate policy and regulatory responses; (2) various stakeholders have not formed a sustainable community of interest; (3) information explosion is accompanied by information fragmentation and digital divide between countries and populations within countries. Meanwhile, current research has focused more on the role of digital services in urban governance and industrial development and lacks systematic research on its role in sustainable agricultural and rural development. To address the realities faced by different stakeholders in the process of digital transformation of agriculture, this paper aims to propose an inclusive analytical framework based on the meta-governance theory to identify and analyze the demand, supply, actor networks, and incentives in the digital technology-and-services-driven sustainable agricultural transformation, starting from the goals and connotations of sustainable agricultural and rural transformation and the interactions among different stakeholders in governing information flows. This analytical framework is further applied to analyze the cases of China and the EU. Although China and the EU represent different development phases and policy contexts, the framework is valid for capturing the characteristics of information flows and actor networks along the flows. It is concluded that a common information platform based on the stakeholder network would benefit all stakeholders, help reach common framing of issues, and maintain a dynamic exchange of information. Depending on the country context, different types of stakeholders may play different roles in creating, supervising, and maintaining such platforms. Digital infrastructures/products as hardware and farmers digital capacity as ‘software’ are the two wings for digital sustainable transformation. Innovative incentives from different countries may inspire each other. In any case, farmers’ actual farming behavior changes should be an important criterion for evaluating the effects and effectiveness of digital transition governance.
Highlights
Improving the performance of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) related to agriculture contributes to achieving the region’s commitment to economic transformation and improving the wellbeing of the region [10,11] and the carbon neutrality that China pledged
In response to the above-mentioned issues, this study aims to address the following questions: (1) What are government policies and programs that promote the adoption of digital technologies in the agriculture and food sectors? How are the factors influencing technology adoption by different stakeholders considered in policy process? (2) What are the perceived changes, challenges, and uncertainties facing the sustainable transformation of agriculture? (3) What needs be reformed and reinvented among different stakeholders in governing information flows?
To answer the questions above, from an integrated and interdisciplinary perspective [36], we aim to develop an inclusive analytical framework based on the meta-governance theory [37], which is helpful for capturing the complexity of digitalization, the dynamic interactions between stakeholders and their networks, the relevance of policy contexts in which these networks operate, and the leverages for changes
Summary
Improving the performance of the SDGs related to agriculture contributes to achieving the region’s commitment to economic transformation and improving the wellbeing of the region [10,11] and the carbon neutrality that China pledged. Digital technology and services offer new opportunities for sustainable transformation of the agricultural sector [12,13]. Digital technology and services can reduce environmental pollution and ensure the safety of agricultural products. Digital technology and services enable the development of agricultural databases, dynamically maintain the balance between crop growth needs and agricultural production inputs, regulate the interaction between soil, cultivation management patterns, and climate, achieve resource conservation and environmental friendliness, and contribute to carbon neutrality [19,20]. Many believed that digital agriculture would deliver a step change in efficiency, productivity, and sustainability at the farm level and across the value chain [23,24]
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