ABSTRACT
While precision agriculture (PA) has enormous potential for reducing the environmental footprint of farming, awareness is growing with respect to the social implications of the technology and the widespread adoption of PA depends on economics. Farming is a business and technology is adopted if it provides benefits for the farmer and farm household. Sometimes those benefits are qualitative (e.g. more time for recreation, reduced fatigue, less stress), but often those benefits are in monetary terms (i.e. more stable cash flow, higher and less variable profits). Farming is subject to what has been called ‘economic physics’ in the sense that someone must pay the bills regardless of the ideological framework within which the farmer is functioning just as everyone is subject to gravity whether or not they approve or think it is fair. Labour and capital must be compensated. The opportunity costs of land and other natural resources must be covered. That compensation might be in cash or in kind. Consequently, the objective of this chapter is to summarize the state of the art in economics of PA. Assuming that adoption is one of the best indicators of technology profitability and benefits, the topic will be approached by (1) reviewing the status of PA adoption worldwide, (2) assessing the degree to which PA adoption was predicted by economic studies and (3) describing future adoption as predicted by recent PA economics research. The chapter will be of interest to PA researchers, research administrators seeking to identify fruitful research areas, educators, farmers and agribusinesses.
