Dynamics of Agriculture 4.0 Technology Adoption in the Agri-Food System: Insights from an Exploratory Study in Rio Grande do Sul—Brazil

Despite the growing relevance of Agriculture 4.0 technologies for enhancing productivity, decision-making, and sustainability in agri-food systems, their adoption remains uneven in developing-country contexts. This study aims to analyze the perceived severity and co-occurrence structure of barriers to Agriculture 4.0 adoption in the agri-food system of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), Brazil, using an exploratory quantitative design grounded in a barrier co-occurrence perspective rather than a causal or actor-centered network interpretation. An online survey conducted in 2024 with farmers in RS evaluated 25 literature-validated barriers spanning technological, economic, political, social, and environmental dimensions. The analysis combined a Barrier Severity Index (BSI), reliability testing, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), K-means clustering, ANOVA by farm size, and proximity-based co-occurrence networks constructed from highly rated barriers. The results show that economic barriers remain the most severe overall, particularly the lack of affordable solutions, high maintenance costs, and limited infrastructure. At the same time, farm-size-stratified networks reveal distinct association structures: small farms display a more segmented pattern linking affordability and technical access to institutional and capability constraints; medium farms show the most globally integrated co-occurrence structure; and large farms exhibit a dense but more differentiated configuration combining cost, interoperability, skills, and governance-related barriers. These findings are interpreted descriptively, as the networks capture patterns of co-reporting rather than causal interdependence. The study contributes a network-analytic representation of perceived barrier configurations and highlights the need for scale-sensitive policy mixes that address bundles of constraints rather than isolated obstacles.