Of all the industries that seem primed for an A.I. disruption, agriculture may not look like the most obvious. For all its advancements in technology and mechanization over the centuries, farming is fundamentally about growing crops and raising livestock — and you can’t digitize an ear of corn.
But right now the industry is in the midst of what some are calling the fourth agricultural revolution, as driverless tractors trundle through fields, drones map moisture levels in soil and cows are outfitted with Fitbit-like devices that track their eating patterns. Yu Jiang, an assistant professor at the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell, predicts that within a few years, most large American farms will have incorporated A.I. into their operations. The result, he says, will be a transformational shift not just in how farms are run but “in how we think about farming as a job.”
For farmers who are already engaging with A.I., that shift is underway — and it can be complicated. Making the decision to buy a giant machine that zaps weeds with lasers or to install a robotic milking system for cattle requires a leap of faith: The equipment is expensive, and learning to use it takes time. It also requires accepting that day-to-day life is going to look and feel different.
But the farmers I spoke with hope that embracing new tech will help them face big challenges in the industry. In particular, they’ve found it more difficult in recent years to find enough workers, and on family-run operations, fewer kids are sticking around to take over the business. It’s still hard to say how exactly the age of A.I. will reshape agriculture. But for now, these farmers are figuring out new ways to use technology to transform their daily work.
‘At first, some of the cows weren’t happy about the robot arm’
Glenn Brake, co-owner of Oakleigh Farm in Pennsylvania, on his automated milking system
My grandfather and grandmother bought this farm in the early 1930s. I farmed with my dad for close to 20 years before buying him out in 2005. Most of my kids worked here at some point in time. Now, though, it’s mostly me and my wife, Karen, and our 120 milking cows.
In 2019, our barn burned down in an electrical fire. Luckily we didn’t lose any cows, but we lost most of our equipment. We’d heard about a company making automatic milkers, feeders and cleaners. The most appealing part was how much time we’d save milking. Before the fire, it took two people to milk the cows: four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening. We’d get up around 2:30 a.m. and start milking by 3.
Did it feel risky to put all of our resources into a system I hadn’t tried? At 60 years old? Yeah, it did! Let me tell you — we never even thought about how A.I. worked before this. But these crazy milkers adjust after each cow. They adjust according to her milk flow, her milk production, her teat location. That all happens, and I guess that’s A.I.
At first, some of the cows weren’t happy about the robot arm on the milkers. They saw this set of brushes whirring, and they’re like, Whoa, what’s this? It took maybe a week before we started to see the majority of the herd just doing their own thing. That was a long, long week! We had to get them up and push them through. Now they go in no problem.
Now, I get up around 5:30 a.m. and I come down to check on things. We have an A.I. feeder, too — I call him Gordon. He has a personality, so I gave him googly eyes. So Gordon will run out here to the barn and say, “Oh, we need feed, yep.” So then he’ll go to the silo, load up and go out and feed the cows.
What do I do with all my free time now? The cows do still need manning — yesterday I was trimming their feet and chopping crops for their feed. Most of my kids have moved away or got full-time jobs, so it’s really just me doing the cow work. I do miss having them around. But on the other hand, when we were a family-operated farm, we couldn’t really do things that interrupted milking time. Now my son can go to his kid’s baseball games.
‘We’re still learning how to use the darn thing’
Steven Gill, co-owner of Rio Farms and Gills Onions in California, on his laser-shooting weed killer
Weed control is the nemesis of every farmer. There are millions of weed seeds on every plant that grows, and we’re always trying to kill the darn guys. Herbicides — I call them chemotherapy for the poor little onions, because they’ve got to grow through it, and it affects them. The less stress we can put on the plant, the better onions we get. Whenever I’m out in the field, I’m always peeling onions and eating them raw. I’m looking for strong flavor and sweetness.
My brother and I started growing tomatoes and peppers for a salsa company in 1979. Then they asked us for onions. Now we grow about 1,800 truckloads of onions per year, and we have more than 300 people working for us. Fifty percent of our business is food service and restaurants. We also sell wholesale onions for salsas, tomato sauces, spaghetti sauces, that kind of thing.
Before, we used a tractor with an herbicide spray rig. We would spray the entire bed with herbicides. We would also weed by hand. But a couple of years ago, one of our major herbicides went off the market, and we couldn’t use it anymore.
By coincidence, around the same time, we heard about this new laser technology. It’ll shoot lasers at the weeds and kill them, and it’ll leave the onions alone. The machine was a significant investment — it’s something like $1.2 million per machine, plus a tractor, which can run you $300,000. But labor is expensive and hard to come by. And the herbicides are expensive, and they’re going away because they’re overregulated. There’s probably some good points and some bad points to that. We just have to accept it.
Once we bought the machine, learning to use it was a big change. People had to get used to it. At the beginning, it definitely didn’t go as fast as we wanted it to, but it’s getting better. We’re still learning how to use the darn thing because it’s so technologically advanced. We had to learn how to control the speed. It’s kind of an amazing machine. We still have to hand-weed fields, but not to the extent that we did before.
I don’t think A.I. will take jobs away. We’re going to start using autonomous tractors in the fall, so we might lose a tractor driver or two, but all the guys that I have managing ranches — I need those guys, because they’ve got eyes and they can look at everything and see what’s going on.
‘We’re attracting a new work force’
Josh A. Morrow, chief operating officer of Super-Sod in Georgia, on his driverless tractors
I’m a second-generation sod farmer. I’ve been around sod farming my whole life. My dad started his farm in Cartersville, Ga., in 1985. Eleven years ago, we were acquired by a bigger company, and now we have farms in six states.
Sod isn’t just grass. We harvest the roots and soil too. Then people buy the grass and transplant it into their yards. Just like a row-crop farmer, we have to prep and plant the field. Then we mow everything, all of our acreage, at least twice a week during the growing season. Think about how long it takes to mow your lawn. Now imagine doing that for thousands of lawns, multiple times a week. We had people mowing 12 hours a day.
I think there’s a stigma against farmers as people who don’t pay attention to technology. But we pay close attention to advancements in technology, because it can really make our operations more efficient. Farmers have always been about maximizing productivity. We started thinking, What parts of this can we automate? We learned about this company called Sabanto, which sells equipment that can turn a regular tractor autonomous. We bought our first unit in 2023.
Now we have about 30 tractors running autonomously in our fields. There’s one human operator for every three to four units, and instead of sitting on a tractor, they’re able to manage it and mow robotically. The operator sets a plan for what each tractor should do throughout the day. A human tractor operator typically has a 20 percent overlap when they mow a field, but these autonomous tractors only have a 2 percent overlap. So we can use less fuel, and we can get more done in fewer hours with fewer men.
It’s a challenge, hiring people who want to work in agriculture. Most people think about working on a farm and they think about sitting on a tractor and sweating. With our robots and autonomous tractors, we’ve been able to attract a younger group of folks who are interested in technology, and then they become interested in farming. Gamer kids are coming out and running some of our autonomous units. We also have autonomous harvesters that literally have gaming chairs with joysticks, so they’re running them like a game. I mean, we’re attracting a new work force that we didn’t even know was possible.
Interviews have been edited and condensed.
Spencer Lowell is a photographer whose work explores the relationship between technology, humans and the natural world. His first monograph, “Futures Past,” will be released this fall.
