Many farmers in the Western Australian wheatbelt have successfully adopted guidance and yield mapping technologies. However they have so far avoided adopting variable rate technology (VRT).  While agronomists and farmers can determine the limiting factors to production, whether it is soil fertility, pH, plant available water capacity (PAWC) or others, they have less confidence in managing spatial variability.
Although WA farmers understand the need to adopt these techniques they have encountered major problems with a lack of compatibility between hardware and software, complexity of software packages, and poor technical support.  A paper based questionnaire was circulated to growers in the WA. The survey along with case studies, first hand incidence of farmers, consultants and hardware suppliers add to the understanding of the problems faced by farmers in establishing a PA system beyond guidance and on to VRT. From this survey, the reasons behind slow or non-adoption of PA were highlighted.  Cost is often explained at the major reason non-adaption but in WA it was a minor reason. The farming community strongly endorse the adoption of precision agriculture technology to manage variability within paddocks.  Nevertheless they have become frustrated with the technology and this has impeded uptake more than any other factor.  This implies they are comfortable making the appropriate agronomic decisions given the data and will move forward when they get the systems up and running.
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