Agric Res (December 2021) 10(4):515–522

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40003-021-00539-x

REVIEW

Precision Agriculture: Where do We Stand? A Review

of the Adoption of Precision Agriculture Technologies on Field
Crops Farms in Developed Countries
Benjamin Nowak1

Received: 10 February 2020 / Accepted: 1 March 2021 / Published online: 2 April 2021
Ó NAAS (National Academy of Agricultural Sciences) 2021

Abstract Precision agriculture is a management concept, which relies on intensive data collection and data processing for
guiding targeted actions that improve the efficiency, productivity, and sustainability of agricultural operations. Several
studies have assessed the adoption rate of precision agriculture technologies at regional or national scale, but the literature
lacks global evaluations of the development of precision agriculture. For this paper, a review of 17 papers was conducted to
provide an evaluation of the adoption rate of precision agriculture technologies on field crops farms in developed countries.
This review shows a fast development of Global Navigation Satellite System-based technologies (such as guidance system
and automatic section control), and yield monitor on combine harvesters, with a rate of adoption ranging from 60 to 80% in
2016. The adoption rate of these technologies is higher for North American farms than for European farms, with an average
rate of adoption 17% higher in North America than in Europe. The three technologies closely correlated with variable rate
application (soil mapping, variate rate fertilizing, and variable rate seeding) have seen a slower pace of growth, with only a
third of the field crops farms of developed countries using automated methods of managing the spatial crop variability and
spatial soil variability within a field. Three hypotheses to explain this difference are discussed: successive adoption of
technologies, reject of complex technologies and preference for technologies improving working conditions.

Keywords Precision farming
Adoption rate
Diffusion of innovation
Variable rate application
Site-specific adaptation

Introduction According to these studies, the number of farm precision

agriculture practitioners is growing slower than expected,
Precision agriculture, also called precision farming, is a especially when compared to the rapid adoption of previ-
holistic management concept, which relies on intensive ous innovations such as hybrid corn seeds in the 1930’s [8],
data collection and data processing for guiding targeted or the rapid development of genetically modified seeds in
actions that improve the efficiency, productivity, and sus- the 1990’s in Northern America [3].
tainability of agricultural operations [12]. If some authors While precision agriculture technologies emerged
have argued that agriculture is undergoing a major revo- roughly at the same time as genetically modified seeds, the
lution due to the ever-increasing use of information and adoption rate of precision agriculture is generally accepted
communication technology [36], others reported a low rate to be slower. However, although several studies have
of adoption of precision agriculture technologies [25, 33]. assessed the adoption rate of precision agriculture tech-
nologies at regional scale [5, 7] or national scale [32, 34],
providing figures for given points in time, the literature
& Benjamin Nowak lacks a global evaluation of the development of precision
[email protected] agriculture. Moreover, precision agriculture is a complex
1 concept that covers a broad spectrum of practices, such as
Université Clermont Auvergne, AgroParisTech, INRAE,
VetAgro Sup, UMR Territoires, VetAgro Sup, Campus use of Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), yield
agronomique, F-63370 Lempdes, France monitoring, soil mapping, variable rate application for

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seeding and variable rate fertilizer application. Such for Germany (3%), 2 for England (3%), 2 for Canada (3%),
diversity needs to be taken into account when assessing the 1 for Finland (1%), and 1 for Denmark (1%).
spread of precision agriculture technologies.
The main goal of this review is to assess the adoption Typology of Precision Agriculture Technologies
rate of precision agriculture technologies by farmers, from
the introduction of these technologies in the 1990’s to the Figure 1 shows the typology proposed in this paper to
present. It focuses on field crops farms in developed define the most commonly precision agriculture technolo-
countries. These farms are among the most likely to adopt gies reviewed in the literature. These technologies can be
precision agriculture technologies because of their capacity divided into three main categories: GNSS use, use of intra-
to invest in relatively expensive tools (compared to farms field diagnosis tools and application of variable rate treat-
in developing countries), and because of their large field ment. Each of these categories may be further subdivided
size which increases the probability of intra-field variabil- into several sub-categories. For instance, GNSS use may
ity and allows for an economy of scale to pay for the refer to use of GNSS for automatic section control or to use
investment in precision agriculture technologies. Special of GNSS for guidance assistance, which in turn may refer
attention has been paid to the characterization of the var- to visual guidance (such as the use of a light bar guidance
ious practices of precision agriculture, to identify the system) or to auto-guidance (sometimes referred to as
fastest-spreading and the slowest-spreading technologies. automated steering system). The goal of the typology of
Fig. 1 is to reflect the interest of the previous studies into
precision farming adoption, not to provide a comprehen-
Materials and Methods sive overview of all precision farming technologies. There
may be some technologies, such as automatic section
Sample and Definition of Observations control for solid fertilizer spreader, which were not inclu-
ded in the reviewed papers.
For this review, after removing papers that relied on the No paper provided an estimation of the adoption rate of
same datasets, such as the National Resource Management all the technologies mentioned in Fig. 1, and no technology
Survey of the US Department of Agriculture or the was studied by all of the reviewed papers. The technology
Southern Cotton Farm Survey, 17 papers that studied the which was most frequently studied is the use of GNSS for
adoption rate of precision agriculture technologies by field autoguidance, with 51 of the 73 observations providing
crops farms in developed countries have been found. In data about its adoption. The adoption rate of GNSS for
order to compare similar figures, only adoption rates autoguidance has been more frequently studied than the
expressed as a percentage of farms have been retained for broader question of the use of GNSS for guidance, for
this study, whereas adoption rates expressed as a percent- which only 14 observations were found (Fig. 1). Since
age of farm area have been rejected. When necessary, the there is substantial heterogeneity in the practices surveyed
original dataset has been consulted to obtain the data by the 17 studies in the sample, a simple aggregation
expressed in the right unit, as it was the case for the method was used to homogenize their results, and to show
Agricultural Resource Management Survey [35] used by the dynamic of precision farming adoption.
Schimmelpfennig and Ebel [29]. The characteristics of the
17 papers are given in Table 1. The data used in these Aggregation of the Results
studies came mainly from surveys which ask farmers (1) if
they use precision agriculture technologies on their farms, To assess the development of precision farming, focus has
(2) if yes, which technologies do they use? been placed on the adoption of six important precision
The 17 papers provided numbers for the adoption rate of agriculture technologies: use of GNSS guidance system,
one or more precision agriculture technologies for 73 use of automatic section control, yield monitoring, soil
observations, each observation being defined by two mapping, variable rate for fertilizing, and variable rate for
parameters: country and year. For instance, Tickner studied seeding. To maximize the number of observations taken
the adoption rate of several precision agriculture tech- into account in the analysis, a simple aggregation method
nologies (GNSS use, yield mapping, soil mapping, and was implemented. For each technology and for each
variable rate application) for two observations: {England, observation, when the adoption rate of a given category
2009} and {England, 2012} [34]. was not available, this value was replaced by the maximum
The 73 observations cover a period of 25 years, from adoption rate of the sub-categories related to this category,
1992 to 2016. They refer to seven countries, and there are if the result of at least of one these sub-categories was
42 observations for USA (57%), 23 for Australia (32%), 2 available. For instance, for the observation {Germany,
2009}, Lawson et al. [17] did not report any estimation for

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Table 1 Characteristics of the 17 reviewed papers

References Sample Number of observations for
the review

Adrian et al. [1] 85 US farms in 2004 1

Jochinke et al. [13] 146 Australian farms in 2006 1
Isgin et al. [11] 491 Ohio farms (USA) in 2003 1
Winstead et al. [37] 42 US farms in 2009 1
Reichardt et al. [25] 2058 German farms in 2007, with a subset of 23 farms for the details of the different 1
technologies adopted
Diekmann and Marvin 1163 Ohio farms (USA) in 2010 1
[5]
Lawson et al. [17] 76 German farms, 184 Danish farms, and 78 Finish farms in 2009 3
Schimmelpfennig and 1129 US corn farms in 2005 1
Ebel [29]
Haak [9] 14,000 Canadian farms in 2006 1
Robertson et al. [27] 1170 Australian farms in 2009 1
Tickner [34] 1392 British farms in 2009, 2371 British farms in 2012 2
Llewellyn and Ouzman 573 Australian farms, from 1992 to 2012 21
[19]
Schimmelpfennig and 1507 US corn farms in 2010 1
Ebel [30]
Schimmelpfennig [28] 2491 US soybean farms in 2012 1
Miller et al. [21] 348 Kansas farms from 1995 to 2016 22
Steele [32] 261 West Canadian farms in 2016 1
Zhou et al. [39] 1811 US cotton farms from 2000 to 2012 13

soil mapping, but mentioned the adoption rates of the three for variable rate seeding). Automatic section control was
sub-categories: grid sampling (14.47%), conductivity the last technology to emerge, in 2005.
(1.32%) and zone sampling (5.26%). Therefore, the From their emergence, all of these technologies have
aggregation method implemented predicted that at least experienced regular growth, but various growth rates. Two
14.47% of the farmers of the observation {Germany, 2009} groups may be distinguished: fast-spreading technologies
used soil mapping, regardless of the method used. In this (guidance system, automatic section control, and yield
particular case, such method did not allow to account for monitor) and slow-spreading technologies (soil mapping,
farmers using only conductivity or zone sampling. For a variable rate fertilizing, and variable rate seeding). The
given year, the number of adopters of a given technology fast-spreading technology group increased the number of
was calculated as the mean of the adoption rates for all users by approximately ? 4% each year, which is twice as
observations. Data treatments were performed with R much as the annual growth of the slow-spreading tech-
software [24]. nologies group (around ? 2% of users each year).
As a consequence, GNSS guidance system and yield
monitor are now widespread on field crops farms in
Results developed countries (between 70 and 80% of users in
2016). Automatic section control was the last technology to
Figure 2 shows the adoption rate for six precision farming emerge, but since it is the one with the fastest annual
technologies on field crops farms in developed countries. growth (? 5.5% of users per year), its rate of adoption is
According to these results, soil mapping was the first now close to guidance system or yield monitor (60% of
technology to emerge in 1996, followed by guidance sys- users in 2016). As regards the slow-spreading technologies,
tems (assisted guidance or autoguidance) and yield monitor approximately one out of three farms used soil mapping or
(coupled or not to GNSS) in 1997. Variable rate application variable rate fertilizing in 2016 and only one out of five
started around 2000 (1999 for variable rate fertilizing, 2002 farms used variable rate seeding.

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Fig. 1 Typology of precision agriculture technologies surveyed in the literature. The numbers in gray (in brackets), correspond to the number of
observations which provide data for the adoption of each precision agriculture technology

When comparing the adoption rates of different geo- automatic section control, and yield monitor), and slow-
graphical zones for a given year, North American countries spreading technologies (such as soil mapping, variable rate
(USA and Canada) showed a higher percentage of adopters fertilizing, and variable rate seeding). A maximum of one
than European countries (Denmark, England, Finland, and out of three farms reported using one of these slow-
Germany). The difference was big for fast-spreading spreading technologies (Fig. 2). Results are given here as a
technologies, with an average of 17% more adopters in percentage of farm size and adoption rates are generally
North America than in Europe. For instance, we found that, higher when expressed as a percentage of cropland area
on average, 18% more North American farmers adopted because large farms are among the first adopters [23]. Still,
guidance system on their farms, than European farmers. despite the expected economic and environmental gains of
This difference was much smaller for the slow-spreading site-specific adaptation of agricultural practices [4, 26],
technologies (only 2% more adopters in North America). adoption of variable rate treatments by farmers has been
low and slow. Three hypothesis to explain this finding are
discussed below.
Discussion Reasons for non-adoption of a technology by farmers
can be divided into two broad categories: They are either
Difference in Adoption Rates Between Technologies unable (first and second hypothesis) or unwilling (third
hypothesis) to adopt [22]. First, since site-specific adapta-
This review highlighted two different groups of precision tion of agricultural practices generally requires the adop-
agriculture technologies, based on their pace of adoption: tion of other technologies such as GNSS and diagnostic
fast-spreading technologies (such as guidance system, tools for soil or crop mapping, variable rate application is

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Fig. 2 Adoption rate of six precision farming technologies for field crops farms in developed countries. The barplots show the average
percentage of farms using each technology, based on a review of the literature. The error bars represent the standard deviations

expected to be the technology last adopted by farmers. an innovation, relatively few people are aware of it and
Such explanation may be consistent with the observations most people are not likely to adopt it, but when the
presented in Fig. 2. The adoption rate of fast-spreading adoption rate reaches a critical point (usually between 10
technologies, and especially the adoption rate of guidance and 20% of users), its rate of growth accelerates. Based on
system, seems to follow the classical pattern of diffusion of these theoretical arguments, precision agriculture might
innovations [20]. Rogers idea is that at the introduction of appear to have been adopted by field crops farms in

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developed countries. The fast-spreading technologies are Limits and Perspectives

already being widely used. The slow-spreading technolo-
gies seem to be reaching their tipping point, and their The main limit of the literature review is that it mixes data
adoption might be expected to accelerate. from various sources such as data from internet surveys,
Second, the complexity and the technical issues asso- interviews conducted during farm shows or national sur-
ciated with some precision agriculture technologies may veys. To counterbalance this variability due to a wide
slow down their adoption. Yield monitoring may be con- variety of sources that is difficult to avoid in a review, it
sidered to be a tool for evaluating intra-field heterogeneity has been decided to focus the study on field crops farms
(Fig. 1), but it may have other applications, such as mon- from developed countries, thus limiting the variability due
itoring crop moisture during harvest [37]. Yield monitors to the type of production or investment capacity. Still, these
need to be connected to a GNSS receiver, and the data farms may experiment different dynamics of adoption due
produced need to be extracted from the monitor and treated to their type of field crops, the structure of the farm or the
with a specific software in order to produce yield maps. In local context. Kutter et al. stressed the importance of the
a study of 573 Australian farmers in 2012, Llewellyn and proximity of agricultural contractors or service providers in
Ouzman found that only one out of two farmers who had a precision agriculture technologies adoption [16]. Such
yield monitor produced yield maps [19]. According to factors may explain some variability observed between
Lindblom et al. ‘‘many farmers have the necessary tech- studies (Fig. 2). It remains that, for the USA, the main
nology to operate site-specifically’’ [18]. Therefore, the results of this review show similar trends to those reported
restricted use of precision agriculture technologies may be in the ‘‘Precision Agricultural Services Dealership Survey’’
due to the complexity of the decision support systems regularly conducted by Purdue University to monitor the
associated with them, and to their non-adaptation to the precision agriculture technology services provided by
present needs of farmers. Such hypothesis is consistent agricultural input suppliers [6].
with the work of Barnes et al., who proposed a classifica- It is more difficult to assess the adoption rate of Euro-
tion of precision agriculture technologies according to the pean farms. Overall, the adoption rate of precision agri-
required degree of involvement [2]. ‘Embodied knowledge culture was higher for North American farms than for
technologies’ which require no additional skills for their European farms. Bigger field crops farms and bigger fields
operation and ‘information intensive technologies’ which in the USA and Canada may partly explain this difference,
require further investment in terms of knowledge, software since the sizes of farms and fields have already been
or data analysis are very similar to the fast- and slow- identified as major drivers of precision agriculture adoption
spreading technologies identified in this review, respec- [23]. For instance, in 2010 the median size of field crops
tively. Complexity of certain precision-farming technolo- farms was 486 ha in USA, compared to 239 ha in Germany
gies is indeed a restraint to the adoption of these [14]. However, this comparison between North America
technologies. One way forward may be the expected and Europe is to be taken cautiously, because most of the
automation of precision agriculture, with further develop- studies reviewed in this article referred to American or
ment of on-board sensors able to perform simultaneous Canadian farms, whereas studies for Europe are relatively
diagnosis and variable rate application [38]. scarce. More studies will be required to precisely assess the
Third, improving the efficiency and productivity of development of precision agriculture in Europe.
agricultural productions may not be the main driver for the Finally, as explained above, it has been decided to focus
adoption of precision agriculture technologies. Farmers this review on field crops farms from developed countries.
also tend to adopt innovations that provide opportunities The cost of precision farming technologies is likely to limit
for significant improvements in their quality of life and their adoption in less developed countries but it would be
working conditions. The desire to reduce the drudgery of interesting to compare the results of this study with data
repetitive tasks is a factor contributing to the adoption of from field crops farms from other countries with advanced
precision livestock farming technologies [10, 15]. For field mechanized agriculture, such as Brazil [31]. It would also
crops farms, one of the advantages of GNSS-based tech- be relevant to investigate if the same dynamic of adoption
nologies, such as guidance system and automatic section is true for other type of production, in particular, high-
control, is to eliminate overlaps and therefore to reduce value crops such as arboriculture or grapevine.
inputs consumption, but the use of these technologies also
reduce fatigue, while variable rate treatments mainly aimed Acknowledgements We are grateful to Geoff Phillips for improving
the English.
at increasing the efficiency of agricultural practices. Fur-
thermore, as described above, the complexity of some Funding This research did not receive any specific grant from
technologies may even be perceived as a factor that can funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.
worsen working conditions.

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