Emerging Paradigms in Modern Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Agriculture evolved from an empirical and artisanal activity into a specialization of biological sciences over the 20th century; this transition intensified into a paradigm shift toward the digital and data-driven sciences since the early 21st century. Attention gradually shifted from boosting yields to refining knowledge and decision-making for sustainable practices, resilience to perturbations, and global change adaptation (Taylor, 2018). Systems thinking and complexity shaped conceptual frameworks, yet innovation uptake lagged due to organizational lock-in and public mistrust. Digital technologies offer opportunities to address these challenges while remaining agnostic to socio-ecological implications. Unprecedented data availability allows quantitative awareness of complex processes; dynamic simulation, frugal modeling, machine learning, and synthetic biology reduce uncertainties across spatiotemporal scales; and integrated platforms foster dialogue among specialists and non-specialists to co-generate interdependent knowledge and action paths.
Structural crises and socio-ecological vulnerabilities undermine socio-economic stability and stimulate divergent paradigmatic responses to global change. Agriculture increasingly relies on science and technology while remaining sensitive to human, natural, and engineered systems. Paradigmatic shifts toward digital and data-driven global-science institutions and resilience theories emerge amid diverse investment frames, stakeholder interactions, and prioritizations across continents. Systems-thinking theory and complexity science elucidate interrelations and integration between emerging frameworks of global change, digital agriculture, sustainable intensification, and other recent developments. Digital agriculture encompasses a range of connectivity and data-generation technologies that collect and exchange information on agricultural activities.
Keywords: Modern Agriculture, Digital technologies, recent developments
