Farmers’ perception of precision technology: The case of autosteer adoption by cotton farmers

Published Date
September 2012, Vol.87:121–128, doi:10.1016/j.compag.2012.05.017

Title 
Farmers’ perception of precision technology: The case of autosteer adoption by cotton farmers

• Author 

• Jeremy M. D’Antoni ^a,
• Ashok K. Mishra ^b,,
• Hyunjeong Joo ^c,

• aDepartment of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Louisiana State University, 215 Martin D. Woodin Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States
• bDepartment of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Louisiana State University AgCenter and Louisiana State University, 128 Martin D. Woodin Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States
• cDepartment of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, Louisiana State University, 11 Martin D. Woodin Hall, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, United States

Received 28 November 2011. Revised 14 May 2012. Accepted 28 May 2012. Available online 29 June 2012.

Abstract 

Precision agriculture and autosteer technology are, overall, profitable investments for farmers, as previous literature has established. However, what has not been investigated is whether or not farmers perceive these technologies as such. This research postulates that cotton farmers must see potential for higher profits as a result of adopting precision technologies in order to adopt it. Using the 2009 Southern Cotton Precision Farming Survey and multinomial logit model, this research investigates farmers’ perception of precision agriculture and how those perceptions impact adoption of the autosteer GPS guidance system. Autosteer adoption was found to be significant and positively related to the perceived future importance of precision agriculture as well as farmers’ ranking of input cost savings relative to other attributes of the autosteer GPS technology. Additionally, results show that the attributes of the cotton picker are also important factors in adoption of autosteer GPS technology.

Highlights

► Farmer’s perceived benefit from PA technologies is an important factor in adoption. ► Farmers who see PA as a benefit to the future of agriculture tend to adopt. ► Farmers valuing input cost savings aspects of PA are more likely to adopt.

Abbreviations

• SCPF, Southern Cotton Precision Farming
• MNL, multinomial logit
• PA, precision agriculture
• RTK, Real-Time Kinematic autosteer

Keywords

• Farmers’ perception
• Precision agriculture
• Autosteer
• Multinomial logit estimation
• Technology adoption
• Input cost saving

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