Precision Agriculture Technologies Positively Contributing to GHG Emissions Mitigation, Farm Productivity and Economics

Athanasios Balafoutis, Bert Beck, Spyros Fountas, Jurgen Vangeyte, Tamme Van der Wal, Iria Soto (), Manuel Gómez-Barbero, Andrew Barnes and Vera Eory
Additional contact information
Athanasios Balafoutis: Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, 118 55 Athina, Greece
Bert Beck: Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food research (ILVO), Burgemeester Van Gansberghelaan 92 box 1, 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium
Spyros Fountas: Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, 118 55 Athina, Greece
Jurgen Vangeyte: Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food research (ILVO), Burgemeester Van Gansberghelaan 92 box 1, 9820 Merelbeke, Belgium
Tamme Van der Wal: Wageningen Environmental Research (Alterra), P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands
Manuel Gómez-Barbero: European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate Sustainable Resources, Economics of Agriculture, Edificio Expo, Calle Inca Garcilaso 3, E-41092 Seville, Spain
Andrew Barnes: Scotland’s Rural College, Peter Wilson Building, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UK
Vera Eory: Scotland’s Rural College, Peter Wilson Building, Kings Buildings, West Mains Road, Edinburgh EH9 3JG, UK

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 8, 1-28

Abstract: Agriculture is one of the economic sectors that affect climate change contributing to greenhouse gas emissions directly and indirectly. There is a trend of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions reduction, but any practice in this direction should not affect negatively farm productivity and economics because this would limit its implementation, due to the high global food and feed demand and the competitive environment in this sector. Precision agriculture practices using high-tech equipment has the ability to reduce agricultural inputs by site-specific applications, as it better target inputs to spatial and temporal needs of the fields, which can result in lower greenhouse gas emissions. Precision agriculture can also have a positive impact on farm productivity and economics, as it provides higher or equal yields with lower production cost than conventional practices. In this work, precision agriculture technologies that have the potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions are presented providing a short description of the technology and the impacts that have been reported in literature on greenhouse gases reduction and the associated impacts on farm productivity and economics. The technologies presented span all agricultural practices, including variable rate sowing/planting, fertilizing, spraying, weeding and irrigation.

Keywords: precision agriculture technologies; greenhouse gas emissions; farm productivity; variable rate nutrient application; variable rate irrigation; variable rate pesticide application; variable rate planting/seeding; precision physical weeding (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (64)

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