=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3930/paper11
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|title=Greek farmers' perceptions of precision agriculture technologies
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3930/paper11.pdf
|volume=Vol-3930
|authors=Thomas Bournaris,Chrysanthi Charatsari,Dimitra Lazaridou,Evagelos D. Lioutas,Efstratios Loizou,Aikaterini Paltaki,Anastasios Michailidis
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/BournarisCLLLPM24
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==Greek farmers' perceptions of precision agriculture technologies==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3930/paper11.pdf
Greek farmers’ perceptions of precision agriculture
technologies⋆
Thomas Bournaris1,†, Chrysanthi Charatsari1,†, Dimitra Lazaridou2,†, Evagelos D. Lioutas3,†,
Efstratios Loizou4,†, Aikaterini Paltaki1,† and Anastasios Michailidis1, ∗,†
1
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, School of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Economics, Greece
2
Agricultural University of Athens, Department of Forestry and Natural Environment Management, Greece
3
International Hellenic University, Department of Supply Chain Management, Greece
4
University of Western Macedonia, Department of Management Science and Technology, Greece
Abstract
How do farmers view precision agriculture technologies and evaluate their impacts on farming and agrifood
systems? Our study aims to answer this question using qualitative data from a sample of Greek livestock
farmers. The results indicate that farmers have a positive attitude toward these technologies. Nevertheless,
they cannot clearly define precision agriculture, while they express several concerns about the adoption
cost and the potential negative social and cultural impacts of precision technologies. These findings reveal
the many different angles through which farmers view precision agriculture technologies.
Keywords
Precision agriculture, farmers, impacts, digital technologies, smart farming 1
1. Introduction
Precision agriculture refers to a set of management strategies that support farmers' agronomic
decisions by exploiting information technologies and the data on spatial and temporal variability
that these technological tools collect [1]. Technologies that enable precision agriculture involve
geographic information systems, global positioning systems, wireless sensor networks, remote
sensing, and decision support systems [2]. Notably, although several studies focus on the impacts of
precision agriculture on farms’ technical efficiency [3], productivity [4], economic performance [5]
or the environment [6-9], only a few studies have focused on farmers’ perceptions of these
technologies.
Researchers have mainly examined perception of precision agriculture as a determinant of the
farmers’ decision to adopt relevant technologies. For example, Adrian et al. [10] found that perceived
ease of using these technological tools is associated with adoption intention. Researching adoption
from a different angle, D’Antoni et al. [11] discovered that farmers’ perceptions of the benefits that
precision agriculture technologies may have and their potential importance for the future of farming
positively influence the adoption decision. Others [12, 13] have also focused on the advantages of
precision agriculture at the farm level, such as yield and income increase, convenience, and cost
reduction.
⋆ Short Paper Proceedings, Volume I of the 11th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in
Agriculture, Food & Environment (HAICTA 2024), Karlovasi, Samos, Greece, 17-20 October 2024.
∗
Corresponding author.
†
These authors contributed equally.
tbournar@agro.auth.gr (T. Bournaris); chcharat@agro.auth.gr (C. Charatsari); dlazaridou@aua.gr (D. Lazaridou);
evagelos@agro.auth.gr (E. Lioutas); eloizou@uowm.gr (E. Loizou); apaltaki@agro.auth.gr (A. Paltaki); tassosm@auth.gr
(A. Michailidis)
0000-0001-9540-7265 (T. Bournaris); 0000-0002-9160-3469 (C. Charatsari); 0000-0002-3763-7510 (D. Lazaridou); 0000-
0003-3784-9553 (E. Lioutas); 0000-0002-9779-0226 (E. Loizou); 0000-0001-9147-3396 (A. Paltaki); 0000-0002-7560-4365 (A.
Michailidis)
© 2024 Copyright for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
CEUR
Workshop
ceur-ws.org 64
ISSN 1613-0073
Proceedings
Several studies uncover a series of negative perceptions toward precision agriculture. For
instance, Moretti et al. [14] found that farmers believe that the adoption of precision agriculture
technologies will lead them to economic losses. The high investment needed to buy these
technologies creates questions about the degree to which precision agriculture is suitable for small
farms [15]. In addition, a study in the U.S.A. revealed that farmers are skeptical toward the reliability
of precision agriculture technologies [16]. The same research uncovered that farmers can see a
positive potential in these technologies, confirming their mixed perception of precision agriculture.
Kendall et al. [17] also arrived at similar findings, showing that Chinese farmers view precision
agriculture technologies as tools that can decrease inputs, enhance productivity and improve quality
while, simultaneously, feel unsure about the capacity of such technologies to deliver the expected
benefits. Nevertheless, a recent study indicates that not all farmers are aware of precision agriculture
and its potential benefits [18].
However, a question not answered by these studies is how farmers conceive the very nature of
precision agriculture technologies. Beyond benefits and potential risks associated with adoption,
these technologies can alter the nature of being a farmer [19], the daily farming life [20] and how
farming is executed [21, 22]. In this study, we aim to uncover how Greek farmers view precision
agriculture technologies and the impacts they have on farming and agrifood systems.
2. Method
Data for this study were collected through semi-structured interviews. An interview guide was
designed to elicit information on participants’ perceptions of the benefits and potential negative
impacts of precision agriculture technologies, the meaning attributed to precision agriculture by
farmers, and their perceptions of the future of farming and the role of precision agriculture
technologies in it.
The participants were eight livestock farmers from Northern Greece. Among them, seven were
men. Their mean age was 42.1 years, and most of them noted that they continued their education
after high school, either by attending post-secondary vocational education classes (50%) or by
graduating from a tertiary institute (37.5%). Their average experience in farming was 16.7 years. Half
of the participants manage mixed crop-livestock farms. The average number of productive animals
per farm was 163, and the average size of cultivated land (for mixed farms) was 18.2 hectares.
Data were audio recorded and then transcribed, coded, and analyzed by conducting a content
analysis. This procedure led to the generation of eight overarching codes. Combining them, we
generated three main categories of content. Table 1 presents these categories, offering a description
for each code. In the next section, we present our analysis per category, summarizing our key
findings.
3. Results
3.1. Farmers’ conceptions of precision agriculture
Farmers who participated in the study do not have a clear picture of what precision agriculture
is. All of them tried to offer a definition based on their experiences. Two of them emphasized the
information and data that precision farming offers, and five farmers focused on the technologies
used in the farms and support farmers’ work, i.e., drones, GPS, robots, meteorological sensors, etc.
Finally, one farmer answered: “e-governance.” It seems that all the farmers understand that the
technological achievements are going together with precision agriculture, but none referred to the
other aspects of precision farming.
3.2. Perceptions of precision agriculture: Benefits, difficulties, and social impacts
Although there were some gaps in farmers’ understanding of precision agriculture, they were
able to mention the benefits that precision agriculture provides to farmers, agrifood systems, farms,
65
and society. Most of the farmers underlined the contribution of precision agriculture to the reduction
of production cost and the improvement of products’ quality. At the same time, three of them noted
that precision agriculture technologies can facilitate the execution of everyday farm tasks. One
participant stated: “it can offer useful data to organize your next steps, while it is a kind of a tool that
facilitates the entrance of changes in the enterprise,” showing farmers’ great expectations from
precision agriculture. Notably, only one participant stressed the importance of precision agriculture
for society since he believes it can offer new job positions.
Based on farmers’ responses, precision agriculture technologies can positively or negatively
impact farms and agrifood systems. As participants mentioned during the interviews, precision
agriculture technologies lead to the limited use of pesticides, agrochemicals, and fertilizers, thus
reducing agriculture’s environmental footprint. In addition, these technologies can offer a detailed
picture of farm enterprise elements. The cost of the technologies and the time and effort that farmers
must spend to understand how precision agriculture tools work are the pivotal negative impacts of
technologies mentioned by farmers.
Table 1
Categories and codes used in the analysis
Category Code Description
Vague understanding of Inability to define precision Farmers cannot offer an
precision agriculture agriculture explicit definition of precision
agriculture
Misperceptions about Farmers cannot distinguish
precision agriculture which tools belong to the
technologies group of precision agriculture
technologies
Mixed perceptions of Benefits of precision Farmers believe that precision
precision agriculture agriculture agriculture has environmental,
economic, and managerial
benefits
Difficulties in implementing Limited adaptability of
precision agriculture precision agriculture
technologies to the Greek
farming conditions
Social impacts of precision Precision agriculture entails
agriculture risks for some categories of
people
Precision agriculture and the Greening the agrifood sector Farmers consider precision
future of farming agriculture technologies tools
that can reduce the
environmental footprint of
agriculture
Farming restructuring Precision agriculture is
expected to alter the way of
doing farming
Improving farmers’ lives Precision agriculture
technologies are expected to
improve farmers’ working and
living conditions
The lack of fit with the conditions that characterize the Greek agrifood sector is another source
of concern for producers. One farmer expressed his doubt about precision agriculture technologies,
66
stating that: “these technologies are not helpful in Greek agriculture due to fragmented land.”
Interestingly, other factors that might reduce the suitability of these technologies for Greek farming
– like the absence of basic technological infrastructure in many farms, the relatively small size of
herds which puts at question the feasibility of investing in precision agriculture technologies, the
lack of advisory support, or skill shortages on the part of farmers and farm workers – were not
mentioned.
Two respondents seem biased towards precision agriculture technologies since they mentioned
only positive impacts on farms and agrifood systems. This positivity bias can be attributed to the
ways technology providers promote these technologies to the farming population and the
expectations about the future of precision agriculture that popular media cultivate.
To further discuss the negative and positive impacts of precision agriculture technologies on
farms and agrifood systems, farmers were asked to provide some examples of technologies that have
positive or negative effects on agrifood systems. Some farmers mentioned spraying with drones and
precision irrigation systems as technological solutions that are able to improve farm productivity.
Others referred to more general concepts, like “soil analysis,” as good practices that can benefit farm
production and product quality without directly linking them with specific precision agriculture
tools.
However, one participant expressed his worries about using farm robots, highlighting the social
impacts of such a technology: “The entrance of farm robots can reduce production cost, but this change
will also reduce the number of farm workers.” This comment shows farmers’ fear of technology and
uncertainty towards it, despite their beliefs concerning the positive effects of precision agriculture
technologies on the agrifood system.
3.3. Envisioning how precision agriculture will determine the future of farming
Remarkably, farmers envision farming along with technologies. As one participant said,
“Digitalization of agriculture is the next step. Big data will facilitate farmers’ work and their everyday
life.” Farmers believe that, in the future, they can rely on technology since it can lead to improve
farm performance. Based on farmers’ interviews, precision agriculture technologies can shape a
better future for the environment since they can mitigate the environmental footprint of agriculture.
One intriguing finding was that farmers believe precision agriculture technologies will
restructure the country's farming sector, as highlighted in the following comment: “In the future,
farmers will be fewer, and the enterprises will be bigger.” Nevertheless, participants were not able to
classify this evolution as positive or negative.
4. Discussion and conclusion
Our study sought to uncover Greek livestock farmers’ perceptions of precision agriculture
technologies. The results revealed that precision agriculture is viewed as a positive development that
can reduce the environmental externalities of agriculture, and has a highly transformative potential
for farming and the agrifood sector. In parallel, a notable finding was that farmers could not define
precision agriculture.
A plausible explanation for farmers’ inability to fully understand the meaning of precision
agriculture while they view it as an evolution with a highly positive potential can be the persuasive
nature of the techniques used to promote digital technologies, which overemphasize the promises of
digitalization [23, 24] thus cultivating public trust toward precision technologies [25]. Although more
work is needed to examine this contention, farmers in our sample seem confident that precision
agriculture technologies can improve the economic performance of farms and assist in effectively
managing farms without fully understanding what precision agriculture is. Hence, despite
producers’ concerns about the negative social impacts of precision technologies, their misfit with the
specific characteristics of the Greek agricultural sector, the high cost of technology purchase, and
67
the cultural and structural disruptions they can cause, farmers’ general attitude toward these
technologies continues to be positive.
Despite the fact that we based our analysis on data derived from a small sample, our work offers
some evidence for understanding how livestock farmers conceive of precision agriculture. However,
since the distance between expectations and the reality of practicing precision agriculture can be
vast [26], future research could explore if adopters of such technologies share the same views with
potential adopters and how the new socio-technical architectures and relational contexts that emerge
after adoption [27] affect farmers’ perceptions of precision agriculture.
Acknowledgements
The study is part of an ongoing project titled “BOOSTing agribusiness acceleration and digital
hub networking by an advanced training program on sustainable Precision Agriculture”. The
research project is co-funded by the European Union. Project number: 101056291.
Declaration on Generative AI
The author(s) have not employed any Generative AI tools.
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