The interview was conducted by starting with a conversation to retrieve some basic information, such as the socio-structural characteristics of the farm, and it then proceeded to the Q sorting phase. This was carried out by making a sign with the grid, which was completely white so as not to influence the respondents, and providing them cards with statements.Each interview lasted between 45 minutes and 90 minutes. The interviews were carried out based on the respondents’ knowledge of PFTs, and they were conducted during three agricultural fairs, one in Bologna , one in Rome and one in Matera . The interviews were conducted in a face-to-face manner through the use of a poster. Based on the traditional scheme, this format has favoured the Q sorting phase. The composition of the sample defined itself through the filter question “In my opinion, precision farming is…“, and the number of interviewees was defined a priori by the authors in a manner consistent with Watts and Stenner,who reported that the number of respondents should be less than 70, representing nearly half of the selected items. Phase 4, Q sorting, is the moment when the interview takes place. All participants received detailed instructions to complete the questionnaire together with the statements and a card for the socio-demographic data. Initially, the participants classified the declarations about “In my opinion, precision farming is…” into three groups and subsequently ordered these in slots of an almost normal forced choice distribution of 9 total points on paper , ranging from “completely disagree” to “neutral” to “completely agree” .
In this way, the numbers of the Q sample items are recorded in the slots that replicate the distribution of the items for each of the Q sorts .The QM allows us to identify some common factors in individuals’ perceptions of the PF theme. The intercorrelation matrix was realised through the centroid procedure,flood table translating the solution through the use of varimax rotation, which is considered the best solution for the QM . Subsequently, through the criterion of eigenvalues greater than one , 5 factors were selected, and the characteristics of the factors are presented in Table 2. The five groups of discourses we discovered are shown in Table 3. The factor scores are the result of weighted averages of the values given to each statement during the Q sorting phase. In Table 2, the Z scores are converted into the original scale values to provide a clearer representation . The five discourses were analysed by examining the statements that most represented the discriminating points or the points of contact between the different perspectives. Once this had been done, it was possible to define the discourses as follows: Discourse 1: “The key to success” Members of this group strongly agree that PF is the use of new technological tools in agriculture to increase product quality and yields and that it gives the adopter a competitive advantage. These respondents do not think that PF is too complex for their knowledge or experience, and they do not associate the use of new technological tools with economic risk that is too high for their business. The entrepreneurs in this group do not think that PFTs are technologies that involve only young farmers or that they are a very widespread technology in their territory and in the Italian sector. They agree on the fact that PFT are a technology that supports decisions by monitoring their activity, and they think that PFTs develop in the presence of innovation services.
The members of this group agree on thinking that PFTs are a technology that supports their decisions by monitoring their activity and strongly believe that they would be impossible to use without a computer or an internet connection. They strongly agree with the fact that PF is a strategy that can be pursued only through the development of an environment that sees the collaboration of research institutions, the territory and the agricultural world, and in contrast, they do not consider producer organisations to be a necessary element to achieve it. PFTs are considered an easy-to-use technology that does not involve only young farmers. The farmers in this group do not see PFTs as a suitable technology for large companies, and they do not think that they are difficult to implement without financial support such as bank loans. They strongly disagree with the fact that PF is difficult to enforce in the agroecological context in which they live, and they connect the use of PFTs with major environmental sustainability. Discourse 3: “Something far from me” The entrepreneurs in this group agree that the use of new technological tools in agriculture can increase their yields and the quality of their products. As PF is considered too complex for their knowledge and experience and impossible without a computer or an internet connection, they think that PF requires organisational and structural adaptations that are difficult to implement and that a producer organisation is not enough to practice it. The members of this group do not consider PFTs to be a widespread technology in their territory or in the Italian agricultural sector. PF is not considered relevant to their current practices, and they do not feel that PF could improve the working conditions of the employees in the company. Discourse 4: “I don’t really realise the usefulness” The farmers in this group strongly consider PF to be a practice that fits their business model and that can make their job easier to carry out, even if it is not easy to understand how it works. They are the only respondents to strongly think that PF is a widespread reality in the Italian agricultural sector and that it can develop without the presence of innovation services.
The entrepreneurs in this group consider it the use of new technological tools in agriculture to reduce production costs but not to be more environmentally sustainable, and for them, PF is associated with an excessive economic risk for the company. PF is not considered the use of new technological tools requiring training and information costs or support by economic and training measures. Discourse 5: “Yes, but no thanks” The members of this group consider PFTs to be an easy-to understand technology that is suitable for large companies, but they do not think they are relevant for their current practices or that they are widespread in their territory. They think that PFTs are difficult to implement without financial support and that they requires training and information costs. The necessary structural and organisational adaptations for this kind of activity are considered to be difficult to implement, but the farmers in this group do not consider external collaboration the only way that can be pursued. They strongly disagree with the fact that PF corresponds with the use of new technological tools to be more environmentally sustainable, but they agree with the use of these tools to increase yields. The aim of the work was to understand Italian agricultural entrepreneurs’ perspectives on PF to determine the role and strategic importance that PF tools could have for the sector. To achieve this aim, it was necessary to explore the sphere of the self. To measure the role of farmers’ sphere of the self in the adoption process, this paper proposes the use of the QM to identify discourses that could play a predominant role in the formalisation of the adoption process. From the analysis conducted through a quali-quantitative approach, 5 predominant perspectives that contain and summarise many of the barriers and drivers found in the literature emerged, highlighting how the complexity of use and the understanding of these innovative tools are the most important components from the entrepreneur’s perspective . The perspectives have elements of contact and strong differences. Discourse 1 is the only discourse that sees PFT as something that could give farmers a competitive advantage and the only discourse that sees it feasible when supported by a producer organisation.
Discourse 2 is the only discourse to strongly think that PFTs are a set of technologies that can increase the environmental sustainability of the company, while the others, especially Discourses 4 and 5, strongly disagree with this statement. Discourse 2 is also the only discourse that relies more on collaboration with others, rolling benches especially compared to Discourse 5. Discourse 3 includes those who consider PF too complex for their knowledge and experience and those who see it as the use of new technological tools in agriculture requiring organisational and structural adaptations that are difficult to implement. Their idea that PF is something difficult to achieve without equipment such as computers and the internet is shared with Discourse 2. Discourse 4 includes those who have the highest consideration of PF as a practice that fits their business model even if they have the strongest idea of it as a technology that is not easy to understand, and they are the only farmers to see it as a widespread reality in the Italian agricultural sector. He members of this discourse are the only ones who do not see it as the use of new technological tools in agriculture requiring training and information costs; furthermore, they have the lowest agreement on the fact that PF has to be supported by economic or training support measures. Discourse 5 is the only discourse that considers PFTs to be an easy-to understand technology that is suitable for large farms. They think that PF requires training and information costs and that it is a difficult activity to be carried out without financial support. Nevertheless, they have the strongest consideration of PF as a strategy that can be pursued even without the collaboration of institutions or other farms. The members of all groups consider PF to be the use of new technology to be more efficient by maximising the ratio between input and output to a slight extent. The extracted perspectives answer the research question we asked ourselves at the beginning of the work, that is, “precision farming for me is…”, delving into the cognitive sphere of entrepreneurs. Unlike other works in the literature, this study extends beyond the perception adoption link , but we try to outline those thoughts that can be useful to stakeholders and policy makers to better understand the PF phenomenon. The aim of this paper was “to colour the picture of farmers’ perception“, and the analysis provided five different “colours” to better outline the picture of the puzzle pieces.
Furthermore, it could be important to emphasise that the self-selected sample of respondents belonging to these 3 approaches is, on average, composed of young people , confirming studies reporting that the propensity for knowledge and adoption of new technologies in agriculture is a prerogative of young actors . This study highlights a possible lack of knowledge and information in the advanced age groups, who decided not to respond to our investigation and who, according to the literature, rely mainly on their experience rather than digital support in their farm management and rarely appear as experts in this kind of study. The QM could be a useful method for answering the question “What do farmers really think about PF?”, revealing in our results some relevant perspectives of Italian farmers and overcoming the limitations of qualitative and quantitative methodologies in studying the self. Given our results and in the context of innovation processes in agriculture, we believe that a mixed method, such as the QM, allows us to colour the piece of the cognitive sphere, which we have set ourselves to investigate. This opens the door for future developments to research to understand the interactions between the cognitive sphere and the other pieces of the puzzle to arrive at a more systemic and holistic understanding of innovation processes in agriculture. This analysis provides new contributions to the study of PF adoption, focusing all the attention on the perspectives of entrepreneurs rather than making another classification of the business types more or less inclined to adopt PFTs.