Farm adoption of embodied knowledge and information intensive precision agriculture technology bundles

Abstract

On-farm adoption of individual and groups of precision agriculture technologies has grown in the past 15 years. Based on a sample of 545 farm observations collected by the Kansas Farm Management Association, farm adoption of bundles of embodied knowledge and information intensive technologies was analyzed using a Markov transition approach. Three separate analyses estimated transition probabilities to show the adoption of bundles of embodied knowledge technologies, the adoption of bundles of information intensive technologies, and the adoption of variable rate technologies contingent on prior adoption of embodied knowledge and/or information intensive technologies. Each analysis was estimated for two separate time periods (2009–2012) and (2013–2016). The probability that farms retain the same bundle or transition to a different bundle by the next time period are reported. The results indicate that persistence with the same technology bundle is the predominant behavior and that this behavior has strengthened in the study’s most recent time period.