Precision Farming or Convenience Agriculture

Profitability issues have constrained adoption of precision agriculture. Recently a question has been raised about role of management time in the adoption of precision agriculture. It has been hypothesized that producers prefer convenient technologies which economize on management time, to those which require more analysis and decision making. This paper provides an overview of the current status of precision agriculture worldwide, a summary of the economic studies of the technology and an examination of the convenience agriculture hypothesis. Both availability and cost of management time appear to be issues for adoption of precision farming technology. Some precision farming technologies appear to use very little on-farm management time under U.S. conditions, either because they are usually out-sourced, or because they mainly affect logistics and do not require data analysis. Some stand-alone precision farming technologies yield low returns even without charging for management time and they would look even worse if management time were deducted. For the most profitable of precision farming practices returns seem to be high enough to pay average management costs. The willingness of traditional U.S. producers to undertake the computer analysis and decision making may be a greater constraint than the opportunity cost of the time because many producers chose agriculture for the active outdoor lifestyle and are reluctant to spend time in front of a computer. The unwillingness of U.S. producers to commit management time to precision agriculture may signal an opportunity for outsourcing the data analysis and recommendation development.