PR - A DECISION SUPPORT MODEL FOR THE ADOPTION OF PRECISION AGRICULTURE PRACTICES

Abstract:

The main objective of the study is to investigate the impact of Precision Agriculture practices on the margin and risk of a farming enterprise and the combination of enterprises as a whole- farm business in comparison to Conventional Farming. The procedures that were used to achieve the objective firstly included the scanning of the fields with the Gamma-ray spectrometer for identification of different management zone according to the variation in the physical soil properties and secondly the development of a decision support model namely the SPARÉ Model to investigate the impact of precision agriculture practices on the margin and risk of a farming enterprise and the combination of enterprises as a whole-farm business. The results of the study indicated that precision agriculture can be used strategically to reduce cost and increase productivity, thus increasing profitability.

Keywords: Precision Agriculture, Decision Support Model, Management zone identification