Precision farming adoption and use in Ohio: case studies of six leading-edge adopters

Precision farming (PF) has the potential to help farmers improve input allocation decisions, thereby lowering production costs or increasing outputs, and, potentially, increasing profits. However, little is known about how farmers use PF technologies to support managerial decision-making, or about the relative magnitude of benefits and costs of PF technologies on individual farms. An embedded, multiple-case study approach was used to collect information about PF from six farms. The objective was to collect information about adoption and use of PF from early adopters to glean information that would be useful to those considering adoption of-this farming system. Results suggest that farmers credit benefits to PF for a wide variety of decision types. The case study farmers appear to derive more value from information gathering technologies (e.g. yield monitors and mapping) than from variable rate application technologies. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.