IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/teepxx/v5y2016i3p335-348.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The carbon footprint and economic impact of precision agriculture technology on a corn and soybean farm

Author

Listed:
  • Rachael M. Brown
  • Carl R. Dillon
  • Jack Schieffer
  • Jordan M. Shockley

Abstract

This study explores the environmental and economic implications of precision agriculture technologies (PATs) to partially fill the void in empirically based estimates in the available published literature. In doing so, the carbon footprint of a Kentucky grain farmer under different production strategies is estimated. A BASE model was optimised without utilising any PATs and compared to models which did incorporate three PATs: sub-meter auto-steer, RTK auto-steer and automatic section control. The four whole farm analysis models were formulated under no-till conditions. These models were used to determine if these PATs (1) increase expected mean net returns and/or (2) enhance the carbon output–input ratio. The results show that all PATs produce improvements in both economic and environmental measures over the BASE model. Specifically, automatic section control gave the greatest economic improvement with a mean net return that was 0.59% over the BASE while RTK provided the greatest environmental enhancement with an improvement of 2.42% over the BASE model. All of the improvements over the BASE scenario can be attributed to the adoption of PAT in the models.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachael M. Brown & Carl R. Dillon & Jack Schieffer & Jordan M. Shockley, 2016. "The carbon footprint and economic impact of precision agriculture technology on a corn and soybean farm," Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(3), pages 335-348, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:5:y:2016:i:3:p:335-348
    DOI: 10.1080/21606544.2015.1090932
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/21606544.2015.1090932
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/21606544.2015.1090932?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Yaya & Zhang, Yuru & Pan, An & Han, Minchun & Veglianti, Eleonora, 2022. "Carbon emission reduction effects of industrial robot applications: Heterogeneity characteristics and influencing mechanisms," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:teepxx:v:5:y:2016:i:3:p:335-348. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/teep20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.