Exploring the use of technological innovations in agricultural farms: a case of South Africa

Agricultural farms play a crucial role in providing food security in South Africa and other parts of the world. These agricultural farms are faced with challenges such as stock theft, equipment theft and armed robberies. This paper aimed to explore the use of technological innovations on agricultural farms to detect and prevent crime. Complexity theory was adopted to achieve the aim of the paper. Qualitative research was adopted to achieve the research objective and in-depth interviews were conducted with farm managers in South Africa. Content analysis was used with the aid of Atlas.ti version 8 to analyse the primary data. The findings uncovered that technological innovation devices such as motion sensors, monitoring surveillance camera devices and drones are used on agricultural farms. Despite these devices' use, agricultural farms face security budget constraints. This paper makes a significant contribution by offering recommendations to key stakeholders and directions for future research on the topic. Key Words:crop theft, content analysis, drone, farm, livestock theft, technological innovation