As part of a precision agricultural approach, drones have increasingly been employed within agriculture for more than a decade and are shown to provide many benefits. However, little research to date has been conducted on farmers’ adoption of drones. This study applies probit regression to analyse future plans of irrigators (n = 1000 in 2015–2016) in adopting drone technology in the southern Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. As at 2015–2016, it was found that only 4–8% of irrigators in various agricultural industries had adopted drone technology. However, the results suggested that up to one third of irrigation farmers stated that they planned to use drones in the following five years, with adoption more likely to occur when irrigators are able to achieve tangible benefits, such as labour and water savings. Human, financial and farm capital factors are found to be positively associated with future drone adoption, including higher education, larger farm size, greater application of irrigation water, being a certified organic operator, having a whole of farm plan and having a farm succession plan. However, financial stress from the bank was found to be an adoption barrier, as well as percentage of net farm income and off-farm income—beyond a certain level.

作为精准农业方法的一部分，十多年来，无人机越来越多地用于农业领域，并被证明可以提供许多好处。然而，迄今为止，关于农民采用无人机的研究很少。本研究应用概率回归分析了澳大利亚墨累达令盆地南部灌溉者（2015-2016 年 n = 1000）采用无人机技术的未来计划。在 2015-2016 年，发现各农业行业中只有 4-8% 的灌溉者采用了无人机技术。然而，结果表明，多达三分之一的灌溉农户表示他们计划在未来五年内使用无人机，当灌溉者能够实现诸如节省劳动力和节水等实实在在的好处时，采用无人机的可能性就更大。人类，金融和农场资本因素被发现与未来无人机的采用呈正相关，包括高等教育、更大的农场规模、更多的灌溉水应用、获得认证的有机运营商、拥有完整的农场计划和农场继任计划。然而，来自银行的财务压力被发现是一个采用障碍，以及净农场收入和非农场收入的百分比 - 超出了一定水平。