Analyzing Precision Agriculture Adoption across the Globe: A Systematic Review of Scholarship from 1999-2020

Precision agriculture (PA) is a holistic, sustainable, innovative systems approach that assists farmers in production management. Adopting PA could improve sustainable food security and community economic sustainability. Developing an understanding of PA adoption attributes is needed in order to assist extension practitioners to promote adoption and better understand the innovation adoption phenomena. A systematic review of literature was conducted to investigate attributes that foster PA adoption. Thirty-three publications were examined, and four themes were found among the reviewed publications. The results were interpreted using Rogers' diffusion of innovations framework to address the research objectives. Relative advantage and compatibility were two dominant attributes needed to strengthen the adoption of PA, and the complexity attribute was rarely communicated to promote the adoption of PA. The systematic review indicated the rate of farmer's PA adoption does not occur at the highest potential levels due to inadequate communication of PA attributes from change agents to farmers. Extension field staff need professional development in communicating the five PA adoption attributes to farmers in order to improve PA adoption and enhance local sustainable food security. Thus, authors recommend future complexity studies from agricultural extension specialists' perspectives to comprehend demonstratable approaches to motivate farmers' adoption of PA.