The article defines the key determinants of adopting precision agriculture technologies and digitalisation. The research objectives are fulfilled by the systematic review and meta-analysis of relevant studies, identified and selected in accordance with the PRISMA protocol in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The findings emphasize the importance of socio-economic factors, such as education, age, and farm size. High technical literacy and adequate information about new technologies—including their expected profitability—are crucial for assessing the benefits of precision agriculture and digitalisation, on which a more considerable expansion of these technologies into the practice of agricultural entities depends. Large and capital-intensive enterprises are more likely to implement new technologies in production practices, especially if they are led by younger and more educated managers who are more open to modern technologies and are more willing to take risks.

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The paper provides findings on the technical efficiency of the European dairy processing industry, which is one of the most important subsectors of the food processing industry in the European Union (EU). The ability to efficiently use inputs in the production of outputs is a prerequisite for the sustainability and competitiveness of the agri-food sector as well as for food security. Thus, the aim of this paper is to provide a robust estimate of technical efficiency by employing new advances in productivity and efficiency analysis, and to investigate the efficiency of input use in 10 selected European countries. The analysis is based on two-stage stochastic frontier modelling incorporating country-specific input distance function (IDF) estimates and a meta-frontier input distance function estimate, both in specification of the four-component model, which currently represents the most advanced approach to technical efficiency analysis. To provide a robust estimate of these models, the paper employs methods that control for the potential endogeneity of netputs in the multi-step estimation procedure. The results, based on the Amadeus dataset, reveal that companies manufacturing dairy products greatly exploited their production possibilities in 2006–2018. The dairy processing industry in the analysed countries cannot generally be characterized by a considerable waste of resources. The potential cost reduction is estimated at 4–8%, evaluated on the country samples mean. The overall technical inefficiency (OTE) is mainly a result of short-term shocks and unsystematic failures. However, the meta-frontier estimates also reveal a certain degree of systematic failure, e.g., permanent managerial failures and structural problems in European dairy processing industry.

Productivity and efficiency in Czech agriculture: Does farm size matter? | Lukáš Čechura, Zdeňka Žáková Kroupová, Michaela Lekešová | Agricultural Journals

The study aims to explore the sources of competitiveness of dairy producers before and after the abolition of milk quotas in selected EU member states. The investigation is based on the stochastic frontier modelling of an input distance function in the specification of the four-error-component model. The model is estimated with a multistep procedure employing the generalized method of moments estimator, addressing the potential endogeneity of netputs, and panel data gained from the FADN database. The results revealed that total factor productivity experienced an increasing trend in the majority of the analysed countries. Since the main driver of productivity growth was found to be the scale effect, our findings support the hypothesis that abolishing milk quotas has a positive effect.