Journal articles on the topic 'Sorghum, agricultural commodities, biogas production'

Biogas is very promising renewable energy resource. The number of biogas plants increase every year. Currently there is a demand for new ways of organic waste treatment from production of different commodities. One of the technologies which produce waste is biodiesel production. One of the wastes from the biodiesel production is G-phase which is mainly consisted from glycerol and methanol. The aim of work was to find the effect of G-phase addition, to fermented material, on biogas resp. methane production. Two lab-scale batch anaerobic fermentation tests (hydraulic retention time 14 and 22 days) under mesophilic temperature conditions 38.5 °C have been performed. The positive effect of G-phase addition to methane production has been found. G-phase was added in three different amounts of inoculums volume 0.5 %, 1% and 1.5 %. The highest absolute methane production has been achieved by 1.5 % addition of G-phase. However it was also found difference in specific methane production due to use of different inoculum consisted of swine or cow manure. The specific methane production in hydraulic retention time of 14 days has been for the same G-phase dose 1.5 % higher for swine manure, 0.547 m3∙kg−1 of organics solids compare with cow liquid manure 0.474 m3∙kg−1 of organics solids.

The aim of the research was determination the efficiency of application 50 t ha-1 digestate from the process of anaerobic digestion on the productivity of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.) on moderately degraded (calcic gleysol) and fertile (chernozem) agricultural land, in southern Banat, Republic of Serbia. In the field experiment during three years digestate amendment led to an increase in the number of leaves by 28.56% and plant height by 5.34%, which led to an increase in yield by 3.40%. The maximum yield was 2018 (41.74 DM t ha-1) on chernozem. The yield of sorghum was lower on calcic gleysol compared to chernozem by 5.43% and was in positive, medium and very significant dependence on precipitation (0.61) and in positive significant correlation with digestate (0.53) and plant height (0.59). Biogas yield reach 157.05 Nm3 t-1 (9582 Nm3 ha-1) on chernozem with digestate. Digestate had a statistically significant positive effect on all tested characteristics of sorghum as well as biogas yield during all three experimental years. The use of digestate as a by-product in the process of producing biogas based on silage of sorghum, allows the substitution of mineral fertilizers and remediation of damaged soil, which contributes to sustainability from the bio-economic and environmental aspects.

The structure of the dry material plant is made up of a cell tissues system. The walls of the cells are formed by cellulose and lignin, ingredients difficult to biodegrade. Therefore, the aim of the breeders performed a variety of energy plants, providing a high yield of dry matter in the green state. This applies particularly to herbs, grown on agricultural and arable land (for example cereals, maize, sorghum, hemp, amaranthus, mallow, sugar beet, potatoes, fodder crops on arable land, permanent grassland and other). The subject of the experiment was to evaluate selected varieties of maize and sorghum and to determine the suitability of the materials on the device model for anaerobic fermentation mixed with beef slurry, and ferment from the biogas plant. Among the varieties of maize there are the significant differences in the production of biogas in the same conditions. Of the three maize varieties (Fixxif, Saxxo, Benicia), the most powerful was Saxxo.

The effect of mechanical pre-treatment of nine different agricultural substrates minced to particle sizes of 1.5 mm, 5 mm and 10 mm on biogas and methane yields and fermentation kinetics was investigated. The results showed, that for five of the nine tested substrates (grass, Progas rye, Palazzo rye, tall wheatgrass, beet), a higher biogas production was obtained for the degree of fragmentation of 10 mm compared to fragmentation of 5 mm and 1.5 mm. For fragmentation of 5 mm, the highest biogas production was achieved for sorghum silage, Atletico maize and Cannavaro maize—649.80, 735.59 and 671.83 Nm3/Mg VS, respectively. However, for the degree of fragmentation of 1.5 mm, the highest biogas production (510.43 Nm3/Mg volatile solid (VS)) was obtained with Topinambur silage. The modified Gompertz model fitted well the kinetics of anaerobic digestion of substrates and show a significant dependence of the model parameters Hmax (biogas production potential) and Rmax (maximum rate of biogas production) on the degree of substrate fragmentation.

In this paper, we focused on the statistical evaluation of inputs to a biogas plant processing a mixture of kitchen waste and agricultural crops to ensure stable biogas production. The aim of the research was to identify the components of the input substrates that will ensure the maximum yield of CH4 and the substrates that increase the production of H2S. By a suitable combination of substrates, it is possible to optimize the production of biogas from the biogas plant. We analyzed a sample of 858 measurements, which were carried out in a selected biogas station for a period of 2.5 years. We were interested in differences in production of CH4, O2, and H2S outputs depending on the composition of inputs. From 17 inputs, 125 substrates were formed. The significance of the influence of individual substrates as categorical variables with the achieved numerical values was assessed by means of ANOVA analysis. Selected substrates were sorted based on CH4 and H2S production using graphical methods (bubble graphs) into four quadrants defining the desired and undesired values of the output variables. We identified a total of 20 suitable and 11 unsuitable substrates to produce quality biogas. Sorghum silage substrate was defined as a substrate that significantly increases the proportion of H2S in biogas.

Human demand for the provisioning services of the ecosystem has been rising and shows the existence of trade-offs in their generation. Brazil is a great producer of agricultural commodities and animal protein, which generates a large amount of residual biomass throughout the production process, especially animal highly polluting waste concentrated in small areas. Ecosystems provide a wide range of services that are of fundamental importance to the well-being, health, subsistence and survival of human beings. The impacts of the waste generated by confined animals can degrade the ecosystem and reduce the services it can supply. Using waste to generate biogas does not require direct resources from the ecosystems to generate energy. In this context, it is an energy product classified as a provisioning service and, at the same time, an ecosystem regulating service, as it mitigates undesirable effects in the environment. The main goal of the classification of biogas as an ecosystem service is to explore its contributions to the ecosystem and to human well-being.

Institutional and policy-induced factors affect farmers’ decisions on the choice of the market to sell their staple foods. This results in low motivation to participate in the production and agricultural commodities’ commercialization. This study determines specific institutional and policy-induced factors affecting the farmers’ decisions regarding the staple food market choice in Tanzania. The study uses household survey data collected from 820 farmers raising staple food crops (maize, rice, sorghum, and millet) randomly selected from the Dodoma and Morogoro regions, Tanzania. The index method, descriptive statistics, and choice model (multinomial logit model) are used for data analysis. Qualitative policy analysis is used for analyzing policy-induced factors. Findings show a low level of integration of farmers into staple food markets, with female-headed households facing more hurdles in accessing markets than male-headed households. Age, formal training, the value of agricultural production, membership in organizations, access to credit, contractual arrangements, and distance to markets are significant factors driving farmers to choose a particular market to sell their produces. Restriction of selling and use of staple food commodities, instability of food policy administration, and procedural operation obstacles are found to be key policy-induced factors affecting the marketing of staple food commodities in Tanzania. The scale of production, as depicted by the value of production, and supply contract arrangement with buyers are important factors to ensure that farming households excel in lucrative markets through increased economies of scale and the ability to reach critical volumes for supplying to various markets. Supporting market linkage and infrastructure, as well as enforcing transparent and non-restrictive food marketing policies, would help many farmers enter into contractual arrangements that increase market access and improve market choices.

Previous empirical studies have generally considered biofuel as a main factor in changes in the relationship between oil and agricultural prices because these changes happened after U.S. biofuel policies were implemented. However, it has been argued that other economic factors can trigger the correlation of these two markets. This study was conducted to examine the transmission mechanisms that influence the relationship between oil and agricultural prices. This paper used the interacted panel vector autoregressive framework, which allowed us to investigate the effect of biofuel production under different regimes of exchange rates and global economic activities. The responses of agricultural prices to oil prices at different levels of biofuel production, global economic activity, and exchange rates were examined in this paper. Data on prices for 10 agricultural commodities—barley, beans, corn, cotton, oats, rice, sorghum, soybean, sunflower, and wheat—from January 2000 to May 2019, were used in this study. Our findings indicate that oil prices can affect agricultural prices through biofuel and exchange rates. Moreover, the effect of biofuel depends on the level of global economic activity and exchange rates. We offer some policy implications on the basis of our findings in this study.

Due to global climate change, sugar sorghum (Sorghum saccharatum), due to its fast growth rate, early maturation, efcient use of water and limited need for fertilizers, is the most promising plant for biofuel production in the world. The article presents the results of the study on establishing the dependence of sugar sorghum energy performance indicators on varietal characteristics (varieties 'Silosne 42' and 'Favorit' and hybrids 'Dovista' and 'Medoviy F1') and the green biomass harvesting time. The purpose of the research was to establish the influence of varietal characteristics and harvesting time on sugar sorghum energy productivity in the zone of unstable moisture in the Central part of the Forest-Steppe of Ukraine. The research subject is sugar sorghum energy productivity indicators (yield of green biomass; sugar content of juice; yield of biogas, bioethanol, solid biofuel; total energy yield). The studies were carried out during 2016–2020 in the zone of unstable moisture in the central part of the Forest-Steppe of Ukraine in the conditions of the Bila Tserkva Experimental Breeding Station of the Institute of Bioenergy Crops and Sugar Beet of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. It has been established that the highest yield of biofuel and energy (up to 791.8 GJ/ha) is achieved under growing sugar sorghum of the 'Dovista' hybrid, provided that its biomass is collected in the phase of full seed ripeness (early October). It is advisable to start collecting sugar sorghum biomass for biogas after the panicle throwing phase. To ensure the maximum yield of bioethanol, the optimal time for harvesting green biomass of sugar sorghum is the second decade of September – the frst decade of October. The maximum yield of solid biofuel is achieved under harvesting biomass after the phase of waxy ripeness of grain. The formation of the yield of green biomass of sugar sorghum was more influenced by weather conditions (47.4 %), the influence of varietal characteristics (17.8 %) and the timing of harvesting (12.8 %) was less. But the energy yield was most influenced by the timing of harvesting biomass (37.4 %). A close linear correlation between the energy output and the yield of green (R2=0.81) and dry biomass (R2=0.99) was established. The most ecological plasticity in terms of the total energy yield per unit area turned out to be the 'Medoviy F1' hybrid (b=1.62), which indicates the prospects of growing this hybrid under favorable weather conditions and high level of agricultural technology. Key words: sugar sorghum, varietal characteristics, harvesting time, energy yield, biofuel yield, productivity.

This study assessed the gross calorific values (GCV) of crop and bio-energy residues. In addition, it assessed the calorific values of sweet sorghum to clarify its potential as energy crop in the region. Furthermore, it statistically analysed the ash remaining after burning three bio-energy residues, bagasse, oil cakes and fermented sludge of biogas production, to identify their potential for agricultural use. Finally, the study calculated alkali content based on nutrient content and GCVs. Significant differences were found among the GCVs of the investigated materials. Among the crop residues, the least significant difference (LSD) (P ≤ 0.05) of the calorimetric values was 76.26 kJ/kg, and among the by-products of bio-energy production, it was 20.80 kJ/kg. Significant differences were also found in nutrient content. In the case of the alkali content of bio-energy residues, the LSD was 0.04 kJ·kg^–1. For the bagasse and compost, the study recommends some technical operations to avoid slagging.

This study investigates the consequences of agricultural technological progress, biofuel policy, and agricultural demand growth on crop, livestock, and bioenergy markets, as well as resource usage and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, over data in the United States. We formed scenarios for future technological progress, demand growth, and biofuel policy and carried out a dynamic simulation. The major findings are: (1) Increasing technological progress reduces cropland for biofuel and cropland pasture for livestock but increases cropland for crop production; (2) Reducing corn ethanol requirements causes more cropland to move from cropping to pasture uses for livestock, however, lowering ethanol from corn residue has minor effects on cropland use; (3) Lowering the requirement of ethanol from corn lowers the price for most of the field crops and meat commodities, especially corn, hay, sorghum, and non-fed beef; (4) Technological progress and biofuel policy have significant effects of on GHG emissions. Increasing technical progress reduces overall GHG emissions. A lower corn ethanol level results in much larger GHG emissions as compared with the control case. This implies producing corn ethanol is effective in reducing emissions; and (5) Technological improvement is a key factor in meeting growing global demand for food and energy and reducing emissions.

Cereal grain is one of the main export commodities of Australian agriculture. Over the past decade, crop yield forecasts for wheat and sorghum have shown appreciable utility for industry planning at shire, state, and national scales. There is now an increasing drive from industry for more accurate and cost-effective crop production forecasts. In order to generate production estimates, accurate crop area estimates are needed by the end of the cropping season. Multivariate methods for analysing remotely sensed Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) from 16-day Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite imagery within the cropping period (i.e. April–November) were investigated to estimate crop area for wheat, barley, chickpea, and total winter cropped area for a case study region in NE Australia. Each pixel classification method was trained on ground truth data collected from the study region. Three approaches to pixel classification were examined: (i) cluster analysis of trajectories of EVI values from consecutive multi-date imagery during the crop growth period; (ii) harmonic analysis of the time series (HANTS) of the EVI values; and (iii) principal component analysis (PCA) of the time series of EVI values. Images classified using these three approaches were compared with each other, and with a classification based on the single MODIS image taken at peak EVI. Imagery for the 2003 and 2004 seasons was used to assess the ability of the methods to determine wheat, barley, chickpea, and total cropped area estimates. The accuracy at pixel scale was determined by the percent correct classification metric by contrasting all pixel scale samples with independent pixel observations. At a shire level, aggregated total crop area estimates were compared with surveyed estimates. All multi-temporal methods showed significant overall capability to estimate total winter crop area. There was high accuracy at pixel scale (>98% correct classification) for identifying overall winter cropping. However, discrimination among crops was less accurate. Although the use of single-date EVI data produced high accuracy for estimates of wheat area at shire scale, the result contradicted the poor pixel-scale accuracy associated with this approach, due to fortuitous compensating errors. Further studies are needed to extrapolate the multi-temporal approaches to other geographical areas and to improve the lead time for deriving cropped-area estimates before harvest.

Assessment results of renewable energy supply in agriculture and forestry are often questionable because 1. the methodology does not describe the nature dependent conditions of agricultural production, 2. there is no standard system boundary, 3. thermodynamic laws are violated and/or ignored, 4. direct and embodied energy is mixed, 5. the mainstream life cycle analysis (LCA) takes downstream and upstream inputs arbitrarily into consideration, depending on the research objectives and the research-funding agency. Thus, the calculation results neglect a wide range of specific energy input figures of upstream and down-stream factors outside farm level resulting in non-comparable figures. The EROI describes the ratio between energy output and input. The advantage of this measure is that energy input and output of fuel supply as well as the resulting CO2 emissions are comparable. There are no standards to calculate the indirect energy input of commodities and services hidden in monetary inputs (insurances, rent for land, subsidies and fees etc.). They are usually excluded because procedures to handle them as energy input are rare. The easiest way to quantify the indirect energy is the use of the energy intensity (EI). Multiplying the price of any good or service with the energy intensity results in a rough estimation of energy embodied in the good or service. Applying the EROI and the EI to compare the efficiency of fossil and renewable energy supply released the following results: Substitution of fossil fuels by renewable ones causes always additional costs. Most known renewable energy supply techniques need more energy than fossil fuel exploitation. Polluting the environment is - for the time being – the most competitive alternative. Renewable engine fuel, produced from biomass, is not competitive with fossil fuels in terms of EROI. The energy of one ha biomass may substitute gasoline to drive a car 40 000 km with biogas. Electric power harnessed from one ha solar panels enables to drive an electric vehicle 5 000 000 km applying the same calculation method. The most efficient way to mitigate CO2 emissions is to include the entropy of agricultural products in energy policy decision making. Albeit wood has a high EROI, processing fuels from wood of low entropy makes no sense: Producing a table from a tree and burning the residues and the table at the end of its lifetime renders the same energy gain as using the tree for fuel only. The EROI of fossil fuels remains probably on high level during the next 50 to 100 years. Oil and gas will be replaced by coal, in Finland also by nuclear power, peat and wood. Although biomass is more renewable than fossil fuels, its EROI is lower and substitution will not reduce CO2 emissions. Climate change may force humankind to reduce fossil fuel consumption. The only sustainable way to achieve this is reduction of fossil fuel exploitation.

The evaluation of commercial hybrids under limited water availability is of primary importance to assess Sorghum bicolor (Moench) as potential multipurpose bioenergy crop in Mediterranean drought prone environments. Ten genotypes were grown during three growing seasons (2010, 2011 and 2012) in open field trials and in pot experiments (2014). Phenological traits, biomass production, fibre content and biomass chemical composition were measured under irrigated and rainfed conditions. Differences in biomass production among the ten genotypes varied across years. In a three-year experiment significant differences were found among the ten genotypes in terms of duration of vegetative growth (P<0.05) and aboveground dry biomass production (P<0.1) in response to irrigated and rainfed conditions. Among the ten genotypes analysed, the hybrid ABF306 stands for its performance in terms of biomass production and chemical composition. In fact, it showed the lowest biomass yield reduction when grown under rainfed conditions, the highest drought tolerance index (=0.9), a °Brix value comparable to that of sweet sorghum genotypes (8.8 °Brix under rainfed conditions), lignin content that was not statistically influenced by water availability, and a lignin cellulose ratio (0.087) favourable for biogas production. The shoot transpiration efficiency and the total transpiration efficiency recorded at high (Exp1) and low (Exp2) vapour pressure deficit were comparable, and sometimes higher, to that of commercial sorghum hybrids. All these characteristics make ABF306 a suitable candidate for bioenergy production in Mediterranean drought prone environments.

It’s a cool autumn morning and I am grateful for the sun as it warms the wet concrete. I have been told we will be spending some time outside later, so I am hopeful it will remain sunny. When everyone arrives, we go directly to the principal’s office. Once inside, someone points at the PA system. People pull out their cameras and take a quick photo—we were told the PA system in each school can be different so information about the broadcasting mechanism could be helpful in an emergency. I decide to take a photo as well. Figure 1: PA system inside the principal's office (Photo by Michelle Stewart) The principal joins us and we begin the task of moving through the school: a principal, two plain clothes police officers, two uniformed police officers, two police volunteers and an anthropologist researcher. Our goal is to document the entire school for a police program called School Action For Emergencies (SAFE) that seeks to create emergency plans for each school on a national Canadian police database. It is a massive undertaking to collect the data necessary to create the interactive maps of each school. We were told that potential hiding spaces were one focus alongside the general layout of the school; the other focus is thinking about potential response routes and staging for emergency responders. We snap photos based on our morning training. Broom closets and cubbyholes are now potential hiding spots that must be documented with a photo and narrated with a strategy. Misplaced items present their own challenges. A large gym mattress stored under the stairs. The principal comments that the mattress needs to be returned to the gym; a volunteer crouches down and takes a picture in the event that it remains permanently and creates a potential hiding spot. Figure 2: Documenting gym mat in hallway/potential hiding spot (Photo by Michelle Stewart) We emerge from the school, take a photo of the door, and enter the schoolyard. We move along the fence line: some individuals take notes about the physical characteristics of the property, others jot down the height of the retaining wall, still others take photos of the neighboring properties. Everyone is taking notes, taking photos, or comparing notes and photos. Soon we will be back at the police station for the larger project of harmonizing all the data into a massive mapping database. Locating the State in Its Objects Focusing on a Canadian police program called School Action for Emergency (SAFE), this article discusses the material labour practices required to create a virtual object—an augmented map. This mapping program provides a venue through which to consider the ways augmented objects come into the world. In this article, I discuss the labour practices necessary to create this map and then illustrate how labour practices are erased as part of this production and consumption of an augmented technology meant to facilitate an effective emergency response. In so doing, I will also discuss the production of authority and expertise through deployment of these police aids. As someone concerned with the ways in which the state instantiates itself into the lives of its subjects, I look at the particular enrollment practices of citizen and state agents as part of statecraft (Stewart). From Weber we are told about the role of police as they relate to state power, “state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory. Note that 'territory' is one of the characteristics of the state. Specifically, at the present time, the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it” (Weber, 34 my emphasis). I would argue that part of this monopoly involves cultivating citizen consent; that the subordination of citizens is equally important to police power as is the state’s permission to act. One way citizen consent is cultivated is through the performance of expertise such that subjects agree to give police power because police appear to be experts. Seen this way, police aids can be critical in cultivating this type of consent through the appearance of police as experts when they appear all knowing; what is often forgotten are the workers and aids that support that appearance (think here of dispatchers and databases). Becoming SAFE The SAFE project is an initiative of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the national police force in Canada. The goal of the program is to “certify” every school in the country, meaning each school will have documentation of the school that has been uploaded into the SAFE computer program. As illustrated in the introduction, this is a time-consuming process requiring not only photos and other data be collected but also all of this data and material be uploaded into the RCMP’s centralized computer program. The desired effect is that each school will have a SAFE program so police and dispatchers can access this massive collection of the data in the event of an emergency. During my time conducting research with the RCMP, I attended training sessions with John, a young corporal in the national police force. One of John’s duties was to coordinate the certification of the SAFE program that included training sessions. The program was initiated in 2007, and within one year, the province we were working in began the process of certifying approximately 850 of its 1700 schools; it had completed over 170 schools and identified 180 local SAFE coordinators. In that first year alone over 23,000 photos had been uploaded and 2,800 school layouts were available. In short, SAFE was a data heavy, labour-intensive process and one of John’s jobs was to visit police stations to get them started certifying local schools. Certification requires that at least one police officer be involved in the documentation of the school (photos and notes). After all the data is collected it must be articulated into the computer program through prompts that allow for photos and narratives to be uploaded. In the session described in the introduction, John worked with a group of local police and police auxiliaries (volunteers). The session started with a short Power Point presentation that included information about recent school tragedies, an audio clip from Columbine that detailed the final moments of a victim as she hid from killers, and then a practical, hands-on engagement with the computer software. Prior to leaving for on-site data collection, John had the trainees open the computer program to become familiar with the screens and prompts. He highlighted the program was user-friendly, and that any mistake made could be corrected. He focused on instilling interest before leaving for the school to collect data. During this on-site visit, as I trailed behind the participants, I was fascinated by one particularly diligent volunteer. He bent, climbed, and stretched to take photos and then made careful notations. Back at the police station he was just as committed to detail when he was paired up with his partner in front of the computer. They poured over their combined notes and photos; making routes and then correcting them; demanding different types of maps to compare their handwritten notes to the apparent errors in the computer map; demanding a street map for one further clarification of the proposed route. His commitment to the process, I started to think, was quite substantial. Because of his commitment, he had to engage in quite a bit of labour. But it was in this process of refining his data that I started to see the erasure of labour. I want to take some time now to discuss the process of erasure by turning attention to feminist and labour theory emerging from science and technology studies as means to articulate what was, and was not, taking place during the data entry. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa highlights the role of care as it relates to labour. In so doing, she joins a literature that draws attention to the ways in which labour is erased through specific social and material practices (see for example works in Gibson-Graham, Resnick and Wolf). More specifically, Puig de la Bellacasa investigates care in labour as it effects what she calls “knowledge politics” (85). In her work, Puig de la Bellaca discusses Suchman’s research on software design programs that produce virtual “office assistants” to assist the user. Suchman’s work reveals the ways in which this type of “assistant” must be visible enough to assist the user but not visible enough to require recognition. In so doing, Suchman illustrates how these programs replicate the office (and domestic servant) dynamics. Seen this way, labour becomes undervalued (think for example interns, assistants, etc.) and labour that is critical to many offices (and homes). Suchman’s work in this area is helpful when thinking about the role of augmented objects such as the augmented police map because in many ways it is a type of office assistant for police officers, handing over virtual notes and information about a location that police would otherwise not necessarily know thereby replicating the office dynamic of the boss that appears all knowing because, in part, s/he has a team that supports every aspect of their work. This devalued work (the lower paid intern or assistant) facilitates the authority—and ultimately the higher wage of the boss—who appears to earn this status. Let me layer this analysis of the “office assistant” with the similar phenomena in scientific knowledge production. Steven Shapin, a sociologist of science, discusses Robert Boyle’s 17th century laboratory and the various technicians in the background that assisted in experiments but remained ignored. Shapin argues contemporary scientific practice has changed little in this regard as technicians remain unaccounted for in the scientific record. He points out “science could not be made if this technician’s work were not done, but it is thought that anyone can do it” (Shapin, 557). Without these workers and their labour, scientific knowledge would not be possible, and yet they are ignored and their labour contribution erased (for example not included in formal discussion about the research, or more recently not included as authors in articles). Of course many technicians are/were paid, but nevertheless their role in the experiment erased. One figure emerged as the expert, the scientist, whose work appeared to be solely configured and created. Programs such as the SAFE project illustrate ways in which the police officer can emerge as an authority figure; but the authority rests on labour practices that move around in the background and go unacknowledged. Much like the lab, there are many ignored figures that produce the necessary objects of police work. In the case of the SAFE program, the ideal is that a police officer will respond to a call for service and with the click of a computer screen will be immersed in this augmented map. One click reveals data about the PA system, another click offers a full layout of the school, instructions about the design of the exits, notes about potential hiding spots inside, the list goes on. Each click is a product of labourer(s) that compiled the data. But these individuals, much like Boyle’s laboratory technicians, fade into the background and are erased as the police officer emerges as an authority. The map, an augmented object, may be credited with the data it holds, but the data collectors are long forgotten as the police officer stands alone as the subject of authority because of the smooth effects of the augmented map. Smooth Effects In an era of big data and data-intensive experiences, augmented objects are increasingly present in our daily lives—with expanded tolerance and appetite. When engaging an augmented object, there is a built-in expectation that the object will "work;" meaning it will run smoothly and effectively. Take Google Maps as an example: one expects the program will run on different scales, offer the capacity to map directions, and perhaps most importantly to be accurate. When these augmented objects run smoothly they appear to be a self-contained and organized object in and of themselves. This paper intervenes on these assumptions to illustrate that this “smooth effect” can serve to erase the labour necessary to produce the effect. Thinking here of the commodity fetish, one can recall Karl Marx’s intervention that illustrated how objects, commodities, permeate our social worlds in such ways that we can see the object—that we only see the object. This concept, commodity fetishism, argues that we erase the labour and social relations involved in the production of the objects, that we forget all that was required to create the object, and we don’t see all that was destroyed in its making. An example is to think of a cup of coffee. As you sip and consume it, do you think of the commodity chain? Do you think of the worker, the working conditions necessary to plant, harvest, roast and distribute the beans; do you think about the production of the bag the beans were transported in; do you think of the warehouse or coffeehouse from which the bag of beans came from? You more likely think about how it tastes—as an object in and of itself, how it is, rather than how it came into being in the world. Similarly, I want to think about this augmented map and how attention turns to it, not how it came into the world. Thinking about labour as it relates to computer programs and computer worlds, social scientists have investigated the necessary work of computer programmers and other labourers (see for example Kelty). Tiziana Terranova discusses the immaterial and affective labour that makes online communities thrive as individuals lend their labour (often unpaid) to create an online “world” that appears to organically come together—she argues these online communities are a product of free labour. Although the police are not working for “free” the volunteers are and the valorization of labour, if erased, still results in the similar outcome. Terranova is concerned about online communities that don’t simply come into being, but rather are the product of free labour. In the case of the SAFE program, labour practices are rendered invisible when augmented objects appear to be running smoothly —when in fact this appearance of smoothness necessarily requires labour and the commodity being exchanged is the claim to authority. Figure 3: Cross referencing hardcopy map (Photo by Michelle Stewart) Figure 4: Using a hand-drawn map to assist data entry (Photo by Michelle Stewart) Moving in a different direction, but still thinking about labour, I want to turn to the work of Chris Kortright. In his work about agricultural scientists, Kortright carefully details the physical practices associated with growing an experimental crop of sorghum. From the counting and washing of the seeds, to the planting and harvesting of the seeds, he delivers rich ethnographic stories from experimental fields and labs. He closes with the story of one researcher as she enters all the data into the computer to generate one powerpoint. He explains her frustration: “You can’t see all the time we spent. The nights we slept here. All the seeds and plants. The flooding and time at the greenhouse. All the people and the labour.” I nodded, these things had disappeared. In the table, only numbers existed. (Kortright, 20) Kortright argues for the need to recognize the social relations carved out in the field that are erased through the process of producing scientific knowledge—the young researcher ultimately knowing her labour did have a place on the slide.In much the same way, the police and volunteers engaged in a practice of removing themselves from the map. There was not enough space for long sentences explaining the debate about the best route to take; longer sentences were replace with short-phrased instructions. Conjuring the image of the police officer looking for fast, quick information, quick data was what they would deliver. The focus of the program was to place emergency icons (police cars, ambulance, fire engines and helicopters) onto the map, outline response routes, and offer photos as the evidence. Their role as individuals and their labour and creativity (itself a form of labour) was erased as the desired outcome was ease and access to data—a smooth effect. I was often told that many of the police cars don’t yet have a computer inside but in an idealized future world, police cars would be equipped with a computer console. In this world, officers could receive the call for service, access the program and start to move through layers of data rapidly while receiving the details of the call. This officer would arrive informed, and prepared to effectively respond to the emergency. Thinking back to labour required to create the SAFE map for each school (photographing, mapping, writing instructions, comparing details, etc.) and then the processes of hiding that labour (limited photos and short instructions) so that the program would appear to run smoothly and be user-friendly, the SAFE program, as an object, serves to abstract and erase labour. Indeed, the desired result was a smooth running program that operated much like Suchman’s office assistant who should be just visible enough to provide the needed help but otherwise remain invisible; similar in many ways to Shapin/Boyle’s scientific technician who is critical to knowledge production and yet remains formally unrecognized. Conclusion This article investigated a map as an entry point to understand the ways in which labour can be erased in augmented objects and, concurrently, how authority figures or experts instead emerge. My goal was to discuss the labour necessary to make one augmented map while also describing the process by which the labour necessary for the map was concurrently erased. Central to this article are the ways in which labour is erased as one clicks between these layers of data and, in the process, thinks the smoothly operating computer program is a measure of the strength of program itself, and not the labour required therein. By focusing on this augmented object, I am pointing out the collective labour needed to co-produce the map but how that map then helps to produce the police officer as authority figure. My intention is to look at the map as an unexpected entry point through which to understand how consent and authority is cultivated. Accordingly, I am concerned with the labour that is erased as this police figure emerges and authority is cultivated on the ground. 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