Distribution of precision agriculture technologies. An exploratory survey of dealership managers' strategies in northern France
Creators: name: Dormois, Yveric
name: Averous, Martial
name: Bayart, Jeanne
name: Cressot, François
name: Lange, Honoré
name: Risse, Paul
name: Rizzo, Davide
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: Dealership
Precision farming
Agricultural equipment
Hauts-de-France
Market strategy

description: Precision agriculture is a management strategy that accounts for temporal and spatial variability to improve the sustainability of agricultural production. In the field, it is being boosted by the development of dedicated technologies, aimed at improving agricultural equipment performance. However, precision agriculture technologies (PAT) are either too new or unfamiliar to be easily adopted by farmers. Therefore, the agricultural machinery distribution network is expected to play a role in supporting farmers in selecting and installing the technologies best suited to their needs and strategies. Yet, little information is available on the distribution of PAT in Europe so far. Our project aimed to fill this gap by updating a preliminary French survey (2021) on the distribution strategies of PAT. We focused on the Hauts-de-France region (northern France) because it combines a large agricultural area for field crops and industrial crops with a high density of equipment manufacturers. Data collection was carried out in two steps. First, qualitative interviews were conducted with experts and stakeholders interested in the deployment of PAT to gather a global view of the market: farmers, students, manufacturers and distributors. Their answers were used to design a semi-quantitative questionnaire addressed to the dealer managers to focus on the distribution strategies of PAT. The list of contacts was based on the results of a previous study of all the distributors in the Hauts-de-France region. In this second survey, we tried to understand how sales representatives present the PAT to their customers: (i) What are the farming systems more interested in PAT? (ii) What are the (perceived) advantages of PAT? (iii) Why do (should) farmers buy these technologies? (iv) Finally, we gathered the managers’ opinions on PAT market trends over a 5-year time. The interviewees represented dealers of different sizes (1 to 206 employees), covering a total of 49 bases and having different sales percentages of PAT. Farmers growing field crops are the most numerous customers of the distributors surveyed. Guidance and recording technologies covered more than half of the sold PAT. The improvement of agronomic and economic performances, along with better comfort at work resulted to be the main reasons for buying PAT. Interestingly, the selling arguments did not necessarily coincide with the farmers' expectations. In five years, the interviewees expect that PAT sales will continue growing, even though they expressed their concern about the lack of qualified personnel to take charge of the setting up and maintenance of these technologies. The last piece of information we gathered was the evolution of farmers' demand for new technologies. The answer highlighted the increase of “comfort at work” as buying reason by the farmers compared to the pre-pandemic period, confirming the results of a previous survey in the same region. Yet, in 5-year time, respondents believe that the economic gains and environmental friendliness of PAT will take over as the main reason to buy. These trends should be confirmed by a regular survey at a national or even European level to produce references needed to support farmers’ choice of new technologies.