A typology is developed describing the typical farms and the agricultural regions in Europe which presumably would apply Precision Farming technologies (PFT) and how. The typology focuses on the potential agronomic (cropping practices) benefits of PFT in crop production.

Precision Farming covers a wide range of technologies for different sectors in agriculture. They differ in techniques, equipment and procedures and form core elements of information oriented production of various crops

. In a first step this complexity of PFT was structured into a three level hierarchy. On level one PFT is divided in (i) recording technologies (soil mapping, yield mapping, crop sensors etc.) and (ii) reactive technologies (VRT application of fertiliser, etc.). The relevant farm types (conventional, organic) form the second level. The third is addressing the specific crop cultivation practices being conducted with PFT.

Crop farming was clustered in the second step using statistical data (“EUROSTAT”) on dominating crops and practices for the EU member states within the spatial elements of NUTS-regions.

Hierarchy and clusters were merged to the typology. The typology was explicitly tested on consistency on four pilot farms of FutureFarm (Germany, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece).

The typology is a necessary precondition to extrapolate the potentials of PFT in different regions of Europe and to define the requirements for modern managing of information flow on farms or with their clients. Such typology also allows addressing economical and ecological effects in impact assessments when analysing future applications of this technology.

The results are outcomes of the EU-funded collaborative research project FutureFarm (www.futurefarm.eu; EU - 7th Research Framework Program).