Technology Transfer and Everyday Life among Smallholder Farmers: Notes on the Small Inconveniences that Slow the Transition to Industrial Agriculture in Ethiopia

Abstract

Global technology transfers reshape agriculture with profound influences on everyday life. Substantial research has documented broader constraints that influence technology transfer among farmers, yet existing theories give us a narrow view into how wider dynamics manifest in everyday life. Using tractor farming in Ethiopia as a case study with ethnographic and historical data, we contribute an account of the everyday social and ecological interactions that shape agricultural technology transfer as well as the wider historical context in which these practices play out. Historically, we find an uneven transition that faltered repeatedly over 50 years. Ethnographically, we identify three types of interplays between actors and the local ecology that shaped the ways that faltering technology transfer actually plays out on the ground: (1) socio-ecological frictions; (2) communicative frictions; and (3) status-based frictions. This study contributes a humanistic account of how farmers and local technology providers experience technology transfers.