New technical innovations in agriculture are changing agricultural practices. In recent years, digitisation in agriculture (DA) has become a promising megatrend, but a review of the current literature, presenting the understanding of DA by researchers, public authorities and within the private sector, demonstrates a large gap in the meaning of terms related to DA between these stakeholders, while nothing is known about Swiss farmers’ understandings. Following this, this study investigates their understanding of DA as term and phenomena. Furthermore, this paper aims to make sense of all the different and potentially confusing terms in use related to DA. To provide a profound basis for research on technology adoption, we combine a postal survey with a group discussion and evaluate the results gathered between January and February 2019 with managers of shared-ownership farms in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. According to the survey and discussion, farmers understand DA as systemic (this means, that is influences the farming system and is not just a single new technology) and associate the term with specific technologies, from smartphones to milking robots, without distinguishing between farm-specific and non-specific technologies. Overall, farmers have ‘negative associations’ as well as ‘positive and neutral associations’ to DA, with the former being most prominent. This refers to possible positive and negative implications when adopting digital technologies on farms. We conclude that what farmers perceive as DA differs greatly from its perception in the scientific community, while the terminology used by public institutions and private companies is much closer to the farmers’ understanding of it. Our results demonstrate the importance of defining and using the phrase ‘digitisation in agriculture’ critically in current and future research that considers the adoption of digital farming techniques because the language used in the collection of data can influence participants’ responses. Our analysis presents positive and negative implications of digital agricultural technologies. It also shows researchers’ responsibility to find common understanding with farmers and the implications of these technologies for farmers, the supply chain and the consumer, but also for the society. This study also motivates responsible innovation research.
