Abstract
Site-specific fertiliser management has been discussed as an information-based farming concept that uses plant- and soil-specific information. However, agricultural practice has shown that, because of limited profitability , the adoption of site-specific fertiliser management often does not meet expectations. This chapter describes a framework for the economic assessment of site-specific fertiliser application and harvest management, provides an overview of selected studies and shows the future perspective of the technologies.
We concluded that precision farming technologies that aim to identify the economically optimal input rate (e.g. site-specific fertiliser application) often fail to provide considerable economic advantages for the farmer. This phenomenon can be explained by flat payoff functions, which are relevant for many agricultural production processes. Economically more promising from a theoretical point of view are precision farming approaches that enable higher product prices by achieving specific product qualities (e.g. site-specific harvest management). However, available studies currently do not provide empirical support for this theoretical conclusion.
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Gandorfer, M., Meyer-Aurich, A. (2017). Economic Potential of Site-Specific Fertiliser Application and Harvest Management. In: Pedersen, S., Lind, K. (eds) Precision Agriculture: Technology and Economic Perspectives. Progress in Precision Agriculture. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68715-5_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68715-5_3
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