Farmers’ mistrust challenges the digital revolution in irrigation

Discussions about digitalization in agriculture often start from the premise that farmers must adapt to new technologies. But what if we turned this approach on its head? What if it were technology itself that had to adapt to the knowledge, experience and needs of the people who work in the fields rather than the other way round?

A study by the Universitat Oberta de Catalonia (UOC) takes the opposite approach, arguing that farmers' lack of trust in digital irrigation technology does not necessarily stem from a lack of knowledge or willingness but is due to the fact that these solutions are often not suited to the actual conditions of the land or to the ecological and social complexity of agriculture.

All this has been considered in the study "Taking farmers' trust issues seriously": Mistrust and the digital tech revolution in water management, published in open access in the Journal of Rural Studies. Its authors are Paloma Yáñez Serrano (lead author) and Lucía Argüelles Ramos, both of them researchers at the UOC's Urban Transformation and Global Change Laboratory (TURBA Lab) group, and Louisa Prause, a researcher at the Environmental Policy department of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Germany.

The study concludes that one of the challenges of agricultural innovation lies not in persuading farmers to adopt these technologies but in designing tools that are actually suited to their agricultural needs. It also notes that farmers' lack of trust can be used to encourage more appropriate innovation in accordance with their needs.

Five types of mistrust

Based on their findings, the authors propose a conceptual framework based on five types of mistrust to gain a better understanding of the relationship between farmers and technology: epistemic, ecological, institutional, practical and relational mistrust.

"Epistemic mistrust arises when digital systems ignore farmers' practical, sensory and context-based knowledge, instead using algorithmic models that fail to reflect the true complexity of the land. Ecological mistrust, for its part, arises when technology fails to take full account of climate variability or natural processes, relying instead on historical data or control cases that are unreliable in a changing climate," said Yáñez.

"The third type, institutional mistrust, refers to concerns about the economic and political structures behind the technology in question, especially when farmers feel that it benefits large corporations over family-run farms. Practical mistrust stems from specific experiences such as technical failures, inaccurate data or systems that are of little use in the real world. Finally, relational mistrust is linked to the failure to involve farmers in the design and development of the technology, rendering them passive users instead of active partners," said the researcher at TURBA Lab, a group attached to the Interdisciplinary Research Centre on Social and Cultural Transformations (UOC-TRÀNSIC).

A qualitative study to change the narrative

Methodologically, the study has taken a qualitative approach focused on analysing farmers' attitudes to digital irrigation technologies. A total of 23 interviews were conducted with various parties working in this sector (farmers, agricultural company representatives, technology developers and researchers) and supplemented with direct observation at technology fairs and an analysis of applications, reports and public policies on the digitalization of agriculture.

According to the UOC researcher, the findings suggest that a change of perspective may be in order. "The study implicitly suggests that the dominant narrative must change from the portrayal of farmers as luddites to the recognition that it is often the technologies themselves that are failing to meet the true needs of agricultural work," she said. This means that modernization must also include designing technologies that take into account the diversity of farming systems, particularly agroecological systems and those that foster biodiversity and local knowledge.

The authors of the study further argue that, instead of viewing it as a hindrance, farmers' informed mistrust should be used to improve productivity and the quality of technology in agriculture. Yáñez explained that "by acting as a form of scrutiny, it forces developers and policymakers to address farmers' actual concerns, improve transparency and design solutions that are better tailored to the needs of the land."

Recommendations for change

The article sets out recommendations to guide future agricultural digitalization strategies, such as co-creating technologies with the farmers themselves or designing transparency mechanisms (such as access to data and algorithms), as well as systems that recognize the diversity of agricultural practices instead of trying to impose a one-size-fits-all model. "These suggestions involve redirecting the funding of irrigation digitalization projects towards more participatory initiatives that are fully based on farmers' knowledge and needs in order to counteract their loss of agency in the development of technologies and the management of irrigation," said Yáñez.

The next steps in their research involve broadening the real-world scope of their work and testing whether their proposed approach to mistrust can also be applied to other agricultural settings. "Our proposal is merely a starting point for longitudinal and comparative studies analysing the relationship between farmers and digital technologies in a variety of socio-ecological settings. Our upcoming projects will focus on the role of digitalization in the scalability of regenerative, agroecological and syntropic farming systems," concluded the UOC researcher.

This project contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 8, Decent Work and Economic Growth; 12, Responsible Consumption and Production; and 13, Climate Action; and aligns with the UOC's Digital transition and sustainability research mission.

Reference article:

Serrano, P. Y., Ramos, L. A. & Prause, L. (2026). "Taking farmers' trust issues seriously": Mistrust and the digital tech revolution in water management. Journal of Rural Studies, 123, 104053. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2026.104053

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