Economic Benefits of Precision Agricultural Technologies

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to build a model of profitability that can be used by individual farmers to calculate the net benefits of using precision agricultural technologies on their farms. Three case farms were selected. Partial budgeting analysis is used to calculate the net profit effect of adopting precision agricultural technology bundles. Two scenarios were compared: farms adopting precision agricultural technologies and farms not adopting. Revenues and costs that differ between the two scenarios are included in the model. A six-step process was employed and @Risk was used to account for risk. Results show that adopting PA is profitable for farms with moderate input use variability and this is amplified with higher input prices.