- On American farms, labor shortages and soaring costs for inputs like fertilizer, pesticides, and other agrochemicals are unsustainable, threatening long-term viability.
- Digital technologies — including data collection tools, AI, and automation — represent a model for how farmers can strengthen and future-proof their operations. Farmers have significant opportunities to cut inefficient applications of crop inputs, reduce food waste, and increase the value of their crops by optimizing both yields and crop quality.
- These technologies will eventually transform how farms operate, with AI-powered robots handling everything from planting and pruning to harvesting, while farmers evolve into strategic systems managers.
KEY INSIGHTS:
The way our food is produced is due for a dramatic change. No, this isn’t about vertical farming. What’s changing are the crops that form the backbone of US agriculture: the vast fields of corn, soybeans, wheat, and fruit and vegetable crops that stretch across hundreds of millions of acres nationwide.
Today, most of these farms operate with a one-size-fits-all model, using homogenous practices of pruning, thinning, and spraying, as well as blanket applications of water, fertilizer, and pesticides, regardless of what individual plants actually need. It’s an approach that often leaves farms using more than they need and struggling to manage the costs. At the same time, American farmers are on a constant hunt to find enough workers to sustain their operations.
On tomorrow’s farms, crop care (pruning, thinning, spraying) and inputs (water, fertilizer, agrochemicals) will be calibrated exactly to what every plant needs. How will farmers know this? From continuous, high-resolution, plant-level data collection, gathered by machines roaming fields and armed with sensors. The application of AI models, trained on the life cycles of millions of plants, will then interpret this data in real time and direct fleets of powerful robots to deliver precise applications of chemicals, nutrients, and pest control. Robots will also take over the planting, pruning, and harvesting. Human farm labor, always in short supply, will be freed from farming’s monotonous, sweltering, and back-breaking tasks.
A more efficient, and more humane, farm
Humans won’t entirely vanish from farms. The farm operator role is essential, but it will change. Future farmers will act more like systems supervisors, overseeing fleets of machines and the intelligent farm operating system. They will make strategic decisions, fine-tune performance, and serve as the ultimate judgment, melding their on-the-ground know-how (shaped by decades of experience with their land) with the omniscient recommendations of their AI counterparts.
“Future farmers will act more like systems supervisors, overseeing fleets of machines and the intelligent farm operating system.”
To some, this vision may sound like science fiction. And in a way, it is. A fully automated farm represents a radical departure from millennia of tradition. But this isn’t a bleak tale of automation displacing workers in pursuit of efficiency. It’s about creating a farming system that is more productive, more resilient, more sustainable, more affordable, and more humane. Over the next decade, a slew of new and maturing technologies will enable farmers to achieve the goals they’ve always cared about: nurturing the land while maximizing the output that nature can offer.
Here’s why we need machines growing our food and how three foundational technologies — data, AI, and robotics — will drive that transformation over the coming decade.
“Over the next decade, a slew of new and maturing technologies will enable farmers to achieve the goals they’ve always cared about: nurturing the land while maximizing the output that nature can offer.”
Escalating costs and vanishing workers
Farming has always been hard work, but in recent decades it’s become harder than ever. In the United States, the cost of essentials — fuel, fertilizer, seeds, and labor — has steadily climbed, squeezing margins and putting enormous pressure on farms of all sizes. Labor shortages are compounding the crisis. In 2024, there were 2.4 million open agricultural jobs in the US, with 56% of farmers reporting labor shortages. This translates to less pruning, delayed or partial harvests, and higher labor costs.
Add to that the impact of climate change. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and unpredictable, damaging crops and delaying planting and harvest seasons. In drought-prone regions like California and Arizona, water scarcity is forcing painful decisions about which crops to grow and how much land can remain in production. In addition, employing workers to harvest fruits and vegetables in extreme heat is more painful than ever.
Meanwhile, global trade tensions have left commodity crop growers exposed. Retaliatory tariffs from major trading partners like China have blocked access to key markets, forcing many farmers to rely on government aid just to stay afloat.
The result? A slow but steady exodus. Between 2017 and 2024, the number of US farms declined by 8% and farmland shrank by 24 million acres.
If we want to feed a growing US population — projected to increase by 22 million by 2055 — without becoming more reliant on imports, we need stronger, more financially resilient farms. That means equipping our farmers to do more with less: growing more high-quality food per acre using less water, fertilizer, chemicals, and labor.
Farming with pixel-level precision
Some of the tools that do this are already in the fields, with large commodity farms becoming increasingly high-tech. Drones, remote sensors, and high-resolution imaging systems are collecting data that offer an unprecedented look at what’s happening plant by plant — tracking the size, growth structure, pest pressure, irrigation levels, and more. Modern drones can capture imagery down to submillimeter detail, even revealing the health status of individual leaves.
But this kind of technology is just the first step. And it remains concentrated among row crops like corn, soy, and wheat. Most specialty crop farms, which grow fruits, vegetables, and nuts, still rely on manual observation and decades-old methods. Take a typical apple orchard. If a grower wants to estimate the number of apples currently developing on their trees, the most common method is to send a dozen workers into the field for a week. After 500 hours of labor, they’ll have a rough estimate based on a limited sample, often with an error margin of 20% to 30%. These imprecise numbers then inform every decision made across the farm, from yield estimates, harvest hiring, sales and marketing, storage, distribution, and revenue forecasts. One result is that farms either overspend or leave fruit to rot on the tree.
This is one of the problems we set out to solve at Orchard Robotics. Like many agritech companies, we use technology to provide growers with the kind of highly accurate data that helps them make smarter decisions throughout the growing season. Our camera systems — which are mounted on tractors or ATVs and can capture 100 high-resolution images per second — detect precise, tree-level data on fruit development, bud counts, canopy size, early signs of disease, trunk diameter and inventory, and other health indicators. This gives growers a much more rigorous and reliable view of what’s happening across their entire orchard.
The rise of the AI farmer
Data alone isn’t enough. To be useful, it needs to be translated into actionable insights. Today, more and more on-farm tools are integrating AI models that can deliver those insights. Our devices, for instance, house powerful onboard computers that run lightweight AI models in real time to count, size, and measure the grade of fruit. John Deere is doing something similar with its See & Spray machines, which use computer vision and AI to differentiate between crops and weeds, spraying precise amounts of herbicides only to the weeds. Other companies are selling weeding robots that can instantly identify, target, and eliminate weeds using thermal energy.
“But the real breakthrough will come when AI shifts from optimizing individual tools or machines to orchestrating entire farming systems.”
These precision systems aren’t just good for productivity — they’re beneficial for the planet. Studies have found that these technologies can reduce pesticide and fertilizer use by over 60%. And since chemical fertilizers alone are responsible for nearly half of agriculture’s global greenhouse gas emissions, the climate upside is significant.
But the real breakthrough will come when AI shifts from optimizing individual tools or machines to orchestrating entire farming systems. A central AI platform could manage a farm from end to end, monitoring, diagnosing, and directing everything from planting and pruning to harvest. Initially, this could mean directing the actions of human farm workers, determining how many people to send where and instructing them on what to do. Eventually, the AI platform will be able to command a network of autonomous machines, with the more deployed, the lower a farm’s labor costs and the more efficient its operations. A single robot for harvesting strawberries, for instance, could pick a 25-acre area in three days. The same task would take 120 workers nearly six weeks. Precision seeder robots can plant 100 seeds per second, each one placed at the exact depth and spacing most optimal for plant health and growth.
AI-driven systems can also help reduce food waste. As much as one-third of fruits and vegetables go unharvested or unsold each year, often due to labor gaps or inconsistent harvest quality. Smart technology can help shrink these losses and make better use of every acre.
“A single robot for harvesting strawberries, for instance, could pick a 25-acre area in three days. The same task would take 120 workers nearly six weeks.”
The path forward
This transformation won’t, and shouldn’t, happen overnight. Farmers will need to see real proof that these high-tech tools deliver: that they can increase harvestable yields, make farms more resilient, and reduce costs enough to make their investment worthwhile.
I’m deeply excited about the challenge and the opportunity. I believe we can help farmers become more successful without the need to expand their footprint. The key to securing the future of our food supply lies in adopting technology that allows us to grow smarter.
