State development of precision agriculture focused on special coffee production in Southeastern of Colombia

Abstract

Colombia is one of the most important agricultural producers in the world. Coffee stands as one of the pivotal products within Colombian agriculture. However, the coffee agro chain is not as developed as in countries like Brazil. In Colombia, there exists a higher prevalence of artisanal procedures. Currently, the state of adoption and implementation of precision agriculture focused on coffee in Colombia is incipient. Therefore, this paper aims to present a bibliometric and statistical study of the current state of precision agriculture (PA) in Colombia, specifically in the southeastern. From the bibliometric research, 37 representative scientific showed the state of progress in PA. The academic sector makes the main contributions to PA. The theoretical study was complemented with the implementation of a survey for 431 farmers. This survey asks about the socioeconomic and production conditions of the smallholders. The most relevant results showed that the fermentation process is unstandardized, varying from 10 to 20; 71% of the farmers have less than 2 ha of land available to develop the crop and present high levels of food insecurity. Castilla is the majority coffee variety harvested, followed by Colombia and Caturra. The most representative results showed that the average age of farmers without study is 49 years old, while the average age for farmers with a kinder garden level is 45 years old. Women are focused on crop management and domestic labor in the region under investigation.