Can Precision Agriculture Increase the Profitability and Sustainability of the Production of Potatoes and Olives?

For farmers, the application of Precision Agriculture (PA) technology is expected to lead to an increase in profitability. For society, PA is expected to lead to increased sustainability. The objective of this paper is to determine for a number of common PA practices how much they increase profitabi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sustainability 2017-10, Vol.9 (10), p.1863
Main Authors: van Evert, Frits, Gaitán-Cremaschi, Daniel, Fountas, Spyros, Kempenaar, Corné
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Agricultural economics
Agriculture
Agrochemicals
Costs
Economics
Fertilizers
Fungicides
Herbicides
Land use
Late blight
Lime
Oleaceae
Olive
Olives
Potato
Potatoes
Precision farming
Profitability
Profits
Social profit
Soil lime
Sustainability
Sustainable agriculture
Variable rate application
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Summary:For farmers, the application of Precision Agriculture (PA) technology is expected to lead to an increase in profitability. For society, PA is expected to lead to increased sustainability. The objective of this paper is to determine for a number of common PA practices how much they increase profitability and sustainability. For potato production in The Netherlands, we considered variable rate application (VRA) of soil herbicide, fungicide for late blight control, sidedress N, and haulm killing herbicide. For olive production in Greece, we considered spatially variable application of P and K fertilizer and lime. For each of the above scenarios, we quantified the value of outputs, the cost of inputs, and the environmental costs. This allowed us to calculate profit as well as social profit, where the latter is defined as revenues minus conventional costs minus the external costs of production. Social profit can be considered an overall measure of sustainability. Our calculations show that PA in potatoes increases profit by 21% (420 € ha−1) and social profit by 26%. In olives, VRA application of P, K, and lime leads to a strong reduction in nutrient use and although this leads to an increase in sustainability, it has only a small effect on profit and on social profit. In conclusion, PA increases sustainability in olives and both profitability and sustainability in potatoes.
ISSN:2071-1050
2071-1050
DOI:10.3390/su9101863