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How AI is transforming agriculture & food. Daily coverage by Hector Herrera.
The global AI-in-agriculture market hit $3.37 billion in 2026, up 24.5% — and farm operators are done accepting pilot results. They want documented ROI, and vendors are now under pressure to deliver it.
Capital is shifting from AI ag hype to measurable farm-level ROI, with AI combined with precision genetics emerging as the highest-conviction investment theme at World Agri-Tech 2026.
AI-connected farm equipment is generating data demands rural broadband cannot meet. The Fiber Broadband Association says existing rural network standards must be fundamentally updated.
More than $3 billion has flowed into AI-powered precision agriculture for crop micronutrients. John Deere covers 5 million acres. Syngenta manages 70 million hectares. Smallholder farmers are being left behind.
AI precision agriculture delivers genuine per-acre efficiency, but an investigative report finds those gains are being captured as yield increases and intensification — not environmental recovery — as the Farm Bill directs billions toward AI subsidies without outcome requirements.
After years of pilot programs, AI in agriculture is delivering measurable commercial returns in 2026 — with John Deere's See & Spray reducing herbicide use by up to 90% in the field.
The 2026 Farm Bill proposes 90% federal reimbursement for AI farm tools, but environmental researchers say the climate benefits of precision agriculture are largely unmeasured and unverified.
The 2026 State of the Farm Report finds just 14% of farmers use AI tools, concentrated in large operations deploying AI for financial analysis — not field management. The precision agriculture promise and the practice are still far apart.
A provision in the 2026 Farm Bill reimburses farmers up to 90% of the cost of AI tools through EQIP — but critics warn it subsidizes Big Tech data collection from American farmland without requiring farmers to own their own data.
Just 14% of U.S. farmers use AI in 2026—but farmers under 50 jumped from 28.8% to 38.4% of the farming population in one year, signaling a structural shift in who is making agriculture decisions.
GEODASH Aerosystems' AI drone platform removes the pre-mapping step that has blocked smallholder adoption of drone-based precision agriculture — arriving as only 14% of North American farmers use AI at all.
Polybee is scaling a fleet of self-recharging AI drones to continuously monitor specialty crops and generate harvest timing forecasts — one of the rare AgTech deployments that has achieved immediately measurable financial returns.
The USDA's new National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech will independently evaluate AI-powered farm tools — precision drones, autonomous equipment, yield models — under real farming conditions before commercial release.