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Digitalisation in agriculture is considered the fourth revolution in farming, which is expressed by a broad range of available digital technologies and data applications. Politicians and experts assume that smart farming technologies (SFT) have a strong potential to enhance economic performance of farming and will contribute to agricultural sustainability as they may increase precision of inputs to crops and soils based on site-specific needs, and link these aspects to farm management systems. This paper explores farmers' and other stakeholders’ perceptions and attitudes towards SFT in Germany with a multi-actor approach. Quantitative and qualitative data show that while there are generally positive attitudes, farmers are less enthusiastic with regard to expected positive effects of SFT for the environment. Also, there is still a number of adoption barriers on the technology level as well as due to an unfavorable institutional and infrastructural environment. Although a multi-actor approach was practiced, close cooperation of practitioners with developers were not frequently observed nor could they be easily supported through action-research. Notwithstanding, through the multi-actor approach, a comprehensive situational picture of SFT appraisal was composed and, a general raise of awareness among the respective AKIS actors generated.

Technological innovations are changing mechanisation in agriculture. The most recent wave of innovations referred to as smart farming technologies (SFT), promise to improve farming by responding to economic, ecological, and social challenges and thereby sustainably develop agriculture throughout Europe. To better understand the relevance of ongoing technological progress for farming systems across Europe, 287 farmers were surveyed in 7 EU countries and in 4 cropping systems, alongside 22 in-depth semi-structured interviews with experts from the agricultural knowledge and innovation system. Of the surveyed farmers, about 50% were SFT adopters and 50% were non-adopters. The number of adopters increased with farm size, and there were more adopters among arable cropping systems than in tree crops. Although all farmers broadly perceive SFT as useful to farming and generally expect SFT to continue to be so, when it comes to specific on-farm challenges, farmers are less convinced of SFT potential. Moreover, farmers’ perceptions of SFT vary according to SFT characteristics and farming context. Interestingly, both adopter and non-adopter groups are hesitant regarding SFT adoption, such that adopters are somewhat disillusioned about the SFT that they have experience with, and non-adopters because they are not convinced that the appropriate technologies are available and accessible. About 60% of all farmers surveyed have a number of suggestions for SFT to become more relevant to a broader range of farms. Both farmers and experts generally consider peer-to-peer communication as important sources of information and deplore a lack of impartial advice. Experts are generally more convinced of SFT advantages, and are positive regarding the long-term trends of technological development. The findings support previous findings on using farmers’ perceptions in innovation processes, and provide insight to the recent trends regarding SFT application to diverse cropping systems across Europe. This suggests that differences related to agricultural structures and farming systems across Europe have to be considered if SFT development and dissemination should be improved.

In order to develop a comprehensive understanding of SFT innovation systems and processes, we analysed successful innovations, by starting our analysis with the felt need and the origins of the innovative idea, through to its implementation and diffusion. Six examples of appropriate cases were chosen in close collaboration with the practice partners of Smart-AKIS (AUA, ACTA, INTIA, ZALF and Delphy) and interactively studied the innovation processes by closely looking at key actors and their functions, and key events. We received three case studies of innovative products (trecker.com, agrivi, and arable smart sprayer) and three case studies of innovative practices (CTF in both Spain and The UK, and section controlled spraying in The Netherlands). Collaborations between innovators and farmers were key interactions throughout all phases of all innovations, and were a key supporting factor. Other supporting factors for the success of the innovations included demonstrations and field days, motivation and positive attitudes of the innovators. Hindering factors were funding at different point, technology availability and compatibility, and infrastructure.

The European agriculture is subject to an ongoing process of technological progress and innovation and during the last 30 years the development of digital innovations in agriculture increased unlikely. Smart farming technologies (SFT), as a part of this digital evolution, are appraised to have an important effect on the development of a sustainable European agriculture and thus, their broad dissemination and adoption is considered as key for future competitiveness. In this context, the goal of this study was to identify socio-demographic, economic, political and societal factors that foster and/or hinder the innovation, adoption and diffusion processes of SFT. In total, we conducted 22 expert interviews in 9 countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain). The interviewees belong to three different actor groups (research, industry, practice) with a comprehensive expertise on influencing factors along the process chain of innovation development, adoption and dissemination in the European context. To extract and analyse the information from the interviews the qualitative content analysis (QCA) with a deductive categorisation and coding method was utilized. Influences of farm and farmers’ characteristics were unevenly rated by the experts, a finding that confirms the results of the smart-AKIS farm survey (Kernecker et. al 2016). Beyond these, the experts identified multiple additional aspects affecting the speed and direction of innovation implementation and development. Major dynamics mentioned are relating to economic and political strategies varying noteworthy throughout Europe. Differences can be mainly perceived between North-Western and South-Eastern Europe also reflected by societal demands and interests. The role of the European Union and its political decisions are considered essential for the future development of sustainable agriculture as supported by SFT. Most experts’ opinions correspond on the increasing importance of SFT and their likely adoption by more and more farmers.

Many of the processes behind the decline of farmland birds can be related to modifications in landscape structure (composition and configuration), which can partly be expressed quantitatively with measurable or computable indices, i.e. landscape metrics. This paper aims to identify statistical relationships between the occurrence of birds and the landscape structure. We present a method that combines two comprehensive procedures: the “landscape-centred approach” and “guild classification”. Our study is based on more than 20,000 individual bird observations based on a 4-year bird monitoring approach in a typical agricultural area in the north-eastern German lowlands. Five characteristic bird guilds, each with three characteristic species, are defined for the typical habitat types of that area: farmland, grassland, hedgerow, forest and settlement. The suitability of each sample plot for each guild is indicated by the level of persistence (LOP) of occurrence of three respective species. Thus, the sample plots can be classified as “preferred” or “less preferred” depending on the lower and upper quartiles of the LOP values. The landscape structure is characterized by 16 different landscape metrics expressing various aspects of landscape composition and configuration. For each guild, the three landscape metrics with the strongest rank correlation with the LOP values and that are not mutually dependent were identified. For four of the bird guilds, the classification success was better than 80%, compared with only 66% for the grassland bird guild. A subset of six landscape metrics proved to be the most meaningful and sufficiently classified the sample areas with respect to bird guild suitability. In addition, derived logistic functions allowed the production of guild-specific habitat suitability maps for the whole landscape. The analytical results show that the proposed approach is appropriate to assess the habitat suitability of agricultural landscapes for characteristic bird guilds. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10661-017-5837-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.