Adoption of precision agriculture technologies in developed and developing countries

Precision Agriculture (PA) deals with the fine-tuned management of the agricultural inputs including, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, and energy to create savings on these inputs, increase yield, augment profitability and conserve the environment. PA technologies include soil mapping, variable rate application (tillage, seeding, fertilizing, irrigation, and pesticide application), yield monitoring mapping, automatic guidance, and autonomous vehicles. Many factors affect the adoption of PA technologies including features of the farms, affordability and profitability of equipment, characteristics of the technologies such as complexity and compatibility, personality and family structure of the farmer, legal affairs, and institutions offering support on these technologies. The level of adoption is variable in different countries as well as in different regions in a particular country. The aim of this paper was to review the studies on the adoption of PA in developed and developing countries and compare their adoption rates. The PA adoption has an increasing trend in developed countries, particularly in the US while significant increase is also observed in other developed countries. Also, PA technologies are introduced in some developing countries including Turkey in recent years. In both developed and developing countries, auto guidance is more adopted in the last decade while yield monitoring and variable rate application was more dominant earlier.