An investigation into the barriers that prevent the adoption of precision farming technologies in combinable cropping in the UK

摘要

Precision Farming (PF) dates back to the early 1960's. however UK uptake has been slow, with only 22% of farmers using GPS auto-steer. Literature highlights adoption barriers as cost and farm size. Primary research was gathered by survey and semi-structured interviews to establish UK arable farmers' perspectives on barriers to PF. Respondents were also asked to comment on PF's effect on winter wheat yield. The study found that UK PF uptake continues to be slow, indicating it is still felt a new concept, although most respondents used PF to some degree. Barriers to uptake were found to be cost, awareness, education, age and farm size, showing congruence with literature. PF was not found to significantly impact yield, but participants reported small increases and other benefits, such as reducing input costs. Further work is currently investigating gross margin variation on arable farms using PF and optimum use of GPS-based systems.