Economics, Business and Management: Recent Advances Vol. 4

Digital agriculture encompasses technologies that collect information, support decisions, coordinate transactions and automate production. Their economic significance depends not simply on technical performance but on whether information changes feasible actions, whether benefits exceed implementation costs, and how gains are distributed. This critical narrative review integrates agricultural economics, development economics and innovation research, drawing on verified literature published from 2000 to 22 July 2026. Live scholarly searching, targeted searches of agricultural and economic indexes, and citation tracing informed a purposive comparison of experimental, observational, modelling and qualitative evidence. The synthesis distinguishes technical efficiency, farm profitability, household welfare and social value rather than treating them as interchangeable outcomes. Randomised studies demonstrate that some digital advisory interventions improve practices, yields or profits, but null findings and small absolute effects remain consequential. Precision farming and automation can be economically attractive under particular production conditions, although results depend on scale, utilisation, complementary skills, supervision requirements and the treatment of capital costs. Recent field observations challenge assumptions that autonomous machinery necessarily reduces total human labour or removes disadvantages associated with small fields. Market platforms can improve selected prices or consumer access without consistently increasing producer incomes. Data reuse and lower transaction costs create opportunities for innovation, while contractual restrictions, market concentration and unequal connectivity can alter who captures the resulting surplus. Environmental benefits require separate assessment because reduced input intensity does not establish lower aggregate resource use or improved ecosystem outcomes. A unifying conclusion is that digital agriculture is an institutional and organisational investment as much as a technological one. Evaluation should therefore prioritise complete economic costs, sustained use, distributional effects, credible counterfactuals and environmental additionality. Public support is most defensible where it addresses demonstrable infrastructure, information or coordination failures and remains accountable to measured outcomes rather than technology adoption alone.