Economic rationalization of agriculture, that is strategic planning and cost accounting, had entered the scientific and political scene since mid-18th century economic enlightenment culminating in the figure of Albrecht Daniel Thaer. Since late 19th century easy to understand advisory literature had encouraged farmers to focus more on how much their cows yield instead of owning more cows than their neighbor. Against the background of having been optimized for two centuries, we examine the role of electronic data processing (EDP) in cattle farming since the 1950s to explain the unprecedented rise in productivity.
Agriculture has been neglected in the history of computing so far, perceived as “outdated” in the passage to the information society. This obscured that certain actors in agriculture were early adopters of EDP. In this paper we scrutinize EDP in FRG and GDR in a transnational European perspective on two levels: On the intercorporate level of agricultural organizations such as breeders’ associations and state-ruled insemination stations we show, how data processing in computing centers took genetic theory to a new practical level. On the level of single farms and cooperatives we examine how EDP changed farm management and cattle handling.
By doing that, we also shed light on the moral history of cattle farming which is inextricably linked to current debates around industrialized livestock production. EDP increased the simultaneity of non-simultaneities in agriculture. While “computer-farms” transformed animals and their body processes in business figures, the larger public continued to imagine animal farms as supratemporal sites of nature. Looking at these transformations, the proposed paper aims to bring the history of agriculture and social history of animal farming into the history of computing.
Martin Schmitt is a research and teaching fellow at the Historical Institute of Paderborn University. His research interests range from contemporary European history to questions of digitalization and computer networking to environmental history. He has a permanent position for digital history, focusing on the critical reflection of the history of computing and the use of
data-driven approaches in historical research. His dissertation Die Digitalisierung der Kreditwirtschaft. Computereinsatz in den Sparkassen der Bundesrepublik und der DDR 1957-1991 was published by Wallstein, Göttingen, in 2021. He has received several awards for his work on the history of computing in East and West Germany, including the Award of the Society for the History of Science, Medicine and Technology 2020 and the Weizenbaum Award 2021 (3rd prize) of the Forum of Computer Scientists for Peace and Social Responsibility e.V.
Veronika Settele is a historian of modern times, particularly interested in societal change and the historical roots of our time. In her first research project she sought to understand how humans and animals interacted practically, economically, and psychologically. Veronika has recently pursued these topics in two monographs, Revolution im Stall: Landwirtschaftliche Tierhaltung in Deutschland, 1945–1990 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2020, winner of the Volkswagen Foundation’s Opus Primum Prize, the German Thesis Award and the Friedrich-Meinecke-Prize) and Deutsche Fleischarbeit: Geschichte der Massentierhaltung von den Anfängen bis heute (C.H. Beck: Munich, 2022), the edited volume Nicht-Essen: Verzicht, Vermeidung und Verweigerung in der Moderne (together with Norman Aselmeyer, Beiheft der Historischen Zeitschrift 73, 2018) and through articles in various journals. Since 2023, she has been a junior research group leader in the focus project "Behind the Norm. Practices of Sexuality between Secularization and Scientification, 1848-1930" at University of Bremen.
