Drivers and Barriers Influencing the Willingness to Adopt Technologies for Variable Rate Application of Fertiliser in Lower Austria

Julia Blasch,Bianca Van Der Kroon,Laura Essl,Francesco Vuolo

doi:10.3390/agronomy11101965

Abstract

Even though a broad range of technologies for variable rate application of nitrogen fertiliser is available, there are hardly any documented cases of their use in Austria. In this study, the drivers and barriers of adoption have been investigated. A survey of 242 farmers in Lower Austria was conducted. The survey covered the farmers’ economic situation, concerns, and expectations regarding the future of their farms and their interest in precision farming technologies. A choice experiment was included in the survey to elicit farmers’ preferences for different features of variable rate application technologies. A series of multinomial logit, mixed logit and latent class logit models were run to analyze the choice experiment. Most farmers were interested in variable rate application, whereas technology costs, yield and environmental improvements were found to be important drivers of adoption. Also, farm size, farming system, technological level and network activities seem to play an important role in the uptake of variable rate application technologies.

Highlights

In the last 25 years, agriculture has undergone massive changes
How is the situation in Austria? Do we have similar barriers to the adoption of technologies? This study investigates the conditions for the adoption of variable rate application (VRA) in Lower Austria
The survey covered the farmers’ economic situation, concerns and expectations regarding the future of their farms, and the extent to which they are interested in the adoption of VRA technologies

Summary

Introduction

In the last 25 years, agriculture has undergone massive changes. While the aims of farmers remain the same—optimised yield, high income and a healthy environment—the technologies to reach these goals changed significantly. Over the last three decades different technologies and applications based on the spatial information in the fields have been developed. They allow farmers to observe their fields with frequently updated maps that allow timely decisions on production inputs (e.g., fertiliser, water, seeds, pesticides) according to the specific (in time and space) requirements of the plants [1,2,3,4,5]. Within the project FATIMA (“Farming tools for external nutrient inputs and water management”—www.fatima-h2020.eu (accessed on 2 August 2021)) a focus was set on spatial variable nitrogen requirements and the provision of this information to farmers. Similar maps can be derived using satellite-based measurements of plant conditions to derive variable rate application maps (“offline systems”) [8,9]

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