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12 results for "precision agriculture"
The 2026 Farm Bill routes federal precision agriculture subsidies through AI platforms controlled by major tech companies — raising concerns about long-term data lock-in for American farmers.
AI precision agriculture tools are delivering real gains on commercial farms, but the 80% of the world's farmers who operate smallholder plots face structural barriers the technology wasn't designed to address.
AI-powered precision agriculture platforms are no longer experimental — they're actively managing 70 million hectares of cropland across 30 countries, confirmed by $15 billion in AgTech investment in 2025.
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.
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.
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.
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.