Region

Gers is a very rural agricultural county (NUTS3) in the south-west of France. Agriculture provides 12% of local employment and it is one of the most important regions for crop production in the country. Since the early 2000s, the number of farms has decline by nearly 20% whilst the average farm size has increased sharply to 86.5 hectares (well above the national average).

Gers is located close to Toulouse, a city that concentrates a large number of aerospace research and commercial companies. There is a strong connection between the city and Gers, as many commuters leave Gers every day to work in Toulouse. The presence of many drone and satellite companies in Toulouse provides the county of Gers with strong potential for the development of precision farming.

Study focus

The study focused on a technological innovation for precision farming. Drones and satellite images provide aerial pictures of the crops, which are turned into maps of ‘agronomic indices’. An algorithm based on a plant growth model then generates a map proposing the “optimal” amount of fertilizer to be applied. The promoter of these tools claims that they make a significant contribution to sustainable crop production.

However, there are still controversies about the impact of these new technologies on the farming system and their assessment is a major issue. Since local farms are too small to conduct meaningful research and development (R&D) activities to assess the potential of such technologies, this assessment is mainly conducted off-farm by intermediary actors such as advisory organizations and applied research institutes.

In France these intermediaries are collective organizations controlled by farmers – namely, the Chambers of Agriculture and applied research institutes which test the potential of new technologies for farmers (new seeds, chemicals, etc.) on experimental stations throughout the country. These intermediary actors play a major role in the development of new technological tools in agriculture by assessing their impacts and reducing the uncertainty around their use.

The aim of this survey was to better understand the role played by advisory organizations in the development and assessment of these technologies for and with farmers, and in farmers’ decisions to adopt them or not.

Full report is available here:

Partner and responsible person contact

National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE)

Pierre Labarthe, pierre.labarthe@inrae.fr

Lessons learned

1. Farmers’ cooperatives play a central role in farmers’ decision making in Gers, whilst the Chambers of Agriculture have a rather limited role.
2. The assessment of new precision farming technologies by farmers in the region was observed to be very short and relatively few sources of information were used to support decision-making. Important new advisory providers in the region were agricultural equipment dealers.
3. Generally, the advice that farmers used for decision-making in precision farming appeared to be linked to the commercial products they were purchasing (e.g. from the suppliers of the digital technologies).