Improving environmental sustainability while maintaining economic viability is a major challenge for Mediterranean cereal production, where conventional systems are associated with high input use, elevated greenhouse gas emissions, and strong cost pressures. Although Conservation Agriculture (CA) and Precision Agriculture (PA) are widely promoted as promising solutions, evidence on their combined environmental and economic performance under real farming conditions remains limited. This study evaluated CA, PA, and their combined application (CPA) in winter cereal systems in Greece, using three years of farmer-managed field data from four representative sites. Agronomic and environmental performance and economic outcomes were assessed under actual farm sizes and a scaled 300 ha scenario. Across sites and years, no systematic yield differences were observed among CA, PA, and CPA, indicating that alternative systems can maintain yield stability under real farmer-managed conditions. Environmental performance was driven primarily by tillage intensity: CA reduced CO2eq emissions by 212–238 kg ha−1 relative to conventional tillage, while CPA achieved the largest reductions (262–332 kg ha−1), accompanied by surface-layer SOM increases of 0.30–0.56% over three years. PA applied within conventional tillage resulted in only modest emission reductions (41–82 kg ha−1), but consistently improved NUE, with variable-rate fertilization increasing NUE by approximately 5–7% relative to uniform application. Despite these environmental benefits, economic performance remained constrained due to high fixed machinery costs, high input prices, and low grain values resulting in negative net profits across all systems. CA reduced total costs by 3.8–11.8%, PA delivered only marginal improvements, while CPA achieved the largest cost reductions (5.0–12.6%) delivering also the most stable net profit mitigation. Carbon credit revenues increased profitability by only 2–3%. Scaling to 300 ha improved competitiveness through fixed-cost dilution, but profitability remained unattainable. Overall, integrated CA–PA systems offer substantial environmental benefits but require targeted policy support, cooperative machinery use, and service-based solutions to enable economically viable adoption in Mediterranean cereal systems.
Cavalaris et al. (Wed,) studied this question.