Agro-Innovation in Practice – why So Slow the Spread of Site Specific Plant Production?

Takácsné György, Katalin

Keywords: innovation in agriculture, diffusion, economic effects, O33, Q16

One of the drivers of ongoing agricultural innovation is not only safe food production, but also food security. Every innovation must be applied in economic terms, ensuring the return of the invested financial and human capital of its development for the implement-ing/ initial firm. Nowadays, precision farming, and site-specific crop production as part of it, are becoming increasingly significant within environmental load reduction. The ad-aptation of some of its elements into practice, compared to initial expectations, has been relatively low. The question is, why? The research highlighted the influencing factors in the spread of innovation, namely that application of technology heavily depends on the managers’ (owners’, farmers’) attitudes, skills and the lack of willingness to cooperate. While the benefits for reducing environmental impact of a site-specific chemical applica-tion are not obvious to producers (and support system does not give a clear indication of it), one cannot expect mass change.
The study evaluates precision agriculture, such as the spread of innovation, along economic theories, and attempts to define those critical elements that, if changed, could contribute to the extensive practical use even in the short term.
Providing adequate in-depth information to the actors in the value chain is essential, as is increasing the willingness to cooperate, and convincing the majority of late followers through a multitude of needs creation strategies. The integrators have a prominent role in the provision of services. The producers’ commitment would help the wider use of technology, as would a stronger integration, and the inclusion of precision agriculture in the CAP ‘greening’ component.

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