Farmer's attitudes towards GHG emissions and adoption to low-cost sensor-driven smart farming for mitigation: The case of Ireland tillage and horticultural farmers

Abstract

The current agricultural practices make the sector the single largest contributor to overall GHG emissions thus contributing to the global climate crisis. Irish farmers are required to reduce total agricultural emissions by 25% by 2030 to mitigate the emissions. This study investigates the mitigation of on-farm GHG emissions for tillage and horticulture sector with regards to farmers’ experiences, practices, and challenges under the climate risks. It also analyses farmers’ willingness to engage in emission mitigation practices such as adoption of smart farming technologies (SFT) of low-cost sensors for environmental monitoring. In addition, identifying key farmer attitudes and variables influencing adoption of the SFT. Questionnaires were administered to farmers (n = 53) across Ireland, augmented with agricultural experts’ interviews. The data obtained was subjected to exploratory data analysis to analyse patterns. This was followed by latent attitude analysis with Latent Class Analysis (LCA) model to reveal underlying attitudes influencing adoption of the SFT. Finally, a backward stepwise regression analysis was undertaken to determine significant (p < 0.05) factors in the farmer’ experiences, practices and challenges that influence their latent attitudes. The farmers have multiple experiences and challenges with their farming practices including high acknowledgement of climate impact on production (76%) and limited awareness of GHG emission sources (10%). They also practice among others use of fertilizer (67%) and pesticides (67%). Nevertheless, they showed willingness to monitor local environmental conditions (67%) including on-farm carbon footprint (CF) measurements (62%). The farmers exhibited three types of attitudes, production orientation (21%), smart farming orientation (30%), and organic farming orientation (49%).

Keywords

• Irish farmers
• Greenhouse gas emissions
• Carbon footprint
• Environment monitoring
• Environmental protection
• Agricultural sustainability