New bypasses to environmental regulations: Digital tools and the ecological transition of agricultural practices

Since 1991, the European Nitrate Directive has aimed to regulate farming practices in a bid to improve water quality, with a particular focus on the use of fertilizers. In France, public authorities have chosen to limit the amount of nitrogen fertilizer that can be applied to crops and to impose traceability requirements on farming practices. These regulatory constraints have led to the commercial launch of two digital tools, promoted by public policy and advisory companies as facilitating the implementation of the directive at farm level: management software and decision-support tools for fertilization (digital advisory services). Through a qualitative survey conducted among scientists, companies designing these tools, and crop farmers using these technologies, this article examines the technical and political trajectory by which these tools have become sociotechnical intermediaries of environmental policies and its impact on the implementation of environmental regulation at farm level. At the crossroads of the sociology of agriculture, the sociology of environment, and science and technology studies (STS), the article shows that these tools contribute to the production of ecological inertia (through their technical design, their current use, and their future development) in France. These technologies pave the way for digital “bypasses” that enable the circumvention of certain environmental regulations, and whose uptake is unequal among farmers.