Approaching to the fourth agricultural revolution: Analysis of needs for the profitable introduction of smart farming in rural areas

Innovation in rural areas depends upon several factors. One of the most important of those is the technology transfer and how it takes place. Referring to the “long waves” theory on the technological revolutions, since the first agricultural revolution to the one we are experiencing today, some indicators, held together, can establish the relevance of innovations for each revolution. This approach, based on a comparison between agricultural systems, starts from a SWOT analysis to make a matrix table created and inspired to the smart specialization strategies on high technology farming of European Commission on research and innovation on the Agrofood sector. The aim of this work was to build a conceptual framework to understand if the frenzy period of precision agriculture could be a chance mostly in terms of sustainability. This paper highlights on a first approach to delineate some guidelines in order to provide feasible technological transferring for every kind of agriculture system.