‘AgTech’ and the restructuring of agrifood labour regimes: Digital technologies, migrant labour and the intensification of production in the UK glasshouse sector

Abstract

This article examines the challenges surrounding the adoption of robotic automation and ‘AgTech’ in glasshouse agrifood production and considers ways in which growers and technology capital are seeking to transform the organisation of work at the point of production because of digital technological interventions. The article does so by examining the deployment by growers of ‘AgTech’ in the glasshouse agrifood sector in the context of the labour regime centred around seasonal migrant labour supply in the UK. The article makes three main contributions. Conceptually it centres technological transformation of the workplace within the context of wider labour regimes. Second, it argues that transformations of the labour process at the point of production through the introduction of ‘AgTech’ are one response by growers to labour supply shortages. Third, it examines the attempts by grower capital to intensify and fragment the nature of work as a result of the introduction of ‘AgTech’.