Adopting Smart Agriculture among organic farmers in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Smart Agriculture is technology-driven agriculture. Taiwanese government has put tremendous efforts to spread this new technology. Many factors affect the rate of adoption of this technology. This paper aims to identify what factors are important using data from a survey of commercial organic farmers in Taiwan. Empirical results reveal that socio-demographic characteristics of farmers are not important for farmers’ adoption decision. Perceived attributes of the new technology are the key factors; farmers more likely to adopt the new technology if it is compatible to their farm, easy to learn and use, and it is expected to increase yields and thus farm income. In addition, trial or test-run of the new technology is another key factor that increases adoption.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology adoption
• factor analysis
• ordered logit
• Smart Agriculture
• organic farming

JEL CODES:

• Q16
• Q18
• C25

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Smart Agriculture or Agriculture 4.0 refers to systems used in agricultural production that employ new technology such as drones, robotics, Internet of Things (IoT), vertical farms and artificial intelligence (AI). It integrates high-technology innovations with agriculture. According to the World Government Summit, Smart Agriculture is a green agricultural revolution with science and technology (De Clercq et al., 2018).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chifumi Takagi

Chifumi Takagi is an assistant professor of the Agriculture Masters Program at National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan (R.O.C). Her research interests are international agricultural development, agricultural extension systems in developing countries and organic agriculture.

Sutrisno Hadi Purnomo

Sutrisno Hadi Purnomo is an Associate Professor in Socio Economics at Faculty of Agriculture, Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia. He specialises in the field of Agribusiness Management with sub-specialties in human resources development. His current research interests are in the area of technology adoption, integrated farming system and organic agriculture.

Man-Keun Kim

Man-Keun Kim is an associate professor in Applied Economics at Utah State University specializing in the field of Regional Economics with sub-specialties in Agribusiness. His current research interests are in the area of technology adoption, regional economic development, and market integration.