Worldwide adoption and profitability of precision agriculture Implications for Brazil

Resumo

Precision agriculture (PA) technology has been on the market for almost 15 years. Global Positioning Systems (GPS), Geographic Information Systems (GIS), yield monitors, variable rate technologies (VRT) and other spatial management technologies are being used by farmers worldwide, but questions remain about the profitability of the technology and its future. This paper summarizes: 1) data on worldwide adoption of PA technology,2) review of PA economics studies and 3) implications for Brazil. Worldwide adoption estimates are based on reports by an international network of collaborators. The PA profitability summary goes beyond previous reviews by including a large number of publications from the last three years, a more detailed breakdown of results by technology type and new technologies. For Brazil, low land prices, low wage rates, focus on commodity crops, and the high cost of imported technology would tend to discourage PA adoption, especially for the classic PA technologies like VRT. The large scale of many Brazilian farms may favor adoption of GPS guidance and use of PA to automate record keeping, employee supervision and quality control. PA adoption may grow rapidly in areas with higher value crops, such as citrus and sugar cane, states with higher land values and regions with a strong agricultural research base. Strong public sector agricultural research organizations will help Brazil develop site-specific PA uses, but the shortage of farm and field level economics in those public sector research organizations may inhibit PA adoption decisions.