Navigating Complexity in Agricultural Transitions through Living Laboratory: Knowledge Co-production, Practice Transformation, and Precision Agriculture Adoption

Abstract

This dissertation examines how precision agriculture knowledge is produced, how it shapes farmer perceptions and practices, and how it informs adoption decisions among the crop advisors through a Complex Adaptive Systems framework. This study employs both secondary data obtained from an NSF-funded living laboratory project situated in South Dakota, Virginia, and Vermont, as well as primary data. The first chapter examined knowledge-production within living laboratories from the research team's perspective. It found that knowledge was produced through negotiation rather than integration, and that structural misalignment between the living lab's transdisciplinary aspirations and the institutional architecture of federally funded research constrained genuine co-production, while still producing real epistemic transformations among team members. The second study examined what participation produced for farmers, adapting Geenhuizen's evaluation framework to account for farmers' inputs and exogenous influences. It found modest, unevenly distributed ripple effects shaped more by farmers' pre-existing orientations than by project design. A federal funding disruption triggered differential engagement among full-time commercial farmers, who were dependent on the funds and subsidies for their livelihood. The third study examined AI adoption among crop advisors using an adapted C-TAM-TPB framework. Perceived usefulness was the strongest predictor of adoption. Data concerns showed a dual role, positively predicting adoption and reflecting anticipatory engagement rather than resistance.