A walk through the Jones family’s farm in northern Ohio feels like a glimpse into the future of agriculture.
Solar arrays supply the bulk of the farm’s electricity. Drones and robotic cultivators monitor crops and pull weeds. And a greenhouse lighting system replicates the sunshine in any geographic location, enabling the farmers to grow crops from regions outside Ohio.
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It saves money and turbocharges efficiency, but comes at a cost. The drone system alone costs tens of thousands of dollars, not to mention ongoing maintenance costs, which means the family must be judicious.
“We have a process of evaluating technology,” said Bob Jones, CEO of the farm, called Chef’s Garden, which grows vegetables and edible flowers for high-end restaurants. “What are we going to gain from the technology and what is it going to cost us?”
Pouring over numbers is now a vital part of his job, he told Straight Arrow.
“We can no longer be just farmers, we have to be business people who farm,” Jones said. “And one of the biggest challenges is what to say ‘no’ to.”
Is high-tech farm equipment worth the investment?
That challenge is increasingly fraught as farmers deploy more technology in fields, barns and greenhouses.
“Farmers need to make sure their new technology has a positive cash flow,” Nathan Hulinsky, an educator for the University of Minnesota’s agricultural extension, told Straight Arrow.
Therein lies the problem.
State-of-the-art machines have upfront costs. Self-driving row crop tractors, for example, have sticker prices measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maintenance, software subscriptions and other ongoing costs pile on hundreds of dollars a month and scant research exists on whether the money saved exceeds those expenses.
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In an August Webinar, Rutgers University agricultural extension educator Sophie Lee calculated the cost of a scouting drone. The sticker price is $3,500. Certificates and licenses are another $210. Ongoing expenses such as insurance tally $1,200 per month.
And then there’s the cost in time and effort.
“It takes quite a lot of time to master how to fly drones,” she said. “And the FAA requires various certificates. Those things add up.”
The return on investment is hard to ascertain for most farming tech, Lee told Straight Arrow.
“There needs to be more research,” Lee said.
The proportion of farmers who use new and emerging technologies is difficult to calculate, but data suggests a significant portion are willing to try advanced machinery and software.
Consulting firm McKinsey released its Global Farmer Insights Report on Sept. 8, which found that 23% of North American farmers use artificial intelligence and 10% are willing to pay for it. The previous report in 2024 did not include questions about AI.
Why are farmers adopting artificial intelligence and automation?
Decades ago, a farmer driving a typical tractor had little more than a steering wheel and a clutch to guide the hulking machine. Today, farmers sit in a cabin that looks more like the inside of a spaceship.
GPS-connected screens guide tractors with pinpoint accuracy and computer systems can drive in place of a person.
Drones and robots remove weeds and apply fertilizer. And AI systems help farmers track crops and livestock.
So-called “ag tech” companies pitch these products as time and money savers, an enticing prospect for farmers riding razor-thin profit margins and working off-farm jobs to make ends meet.
Netafim Irrigation boasts that it helps farmers conserve water through high-tech irrigation systems.
Roy Levinson, the company’s commercial lead for digital farming, said a farmer who recently installed the company’s product saw immediate savings.
“It took less than 30 days to fully pay for the equipment and recover the full cost,” he told Straight Arrow.
Levinson did not directly answer follow-up questions asking how Netafim determines that its systems save money.
“We focus on measurable outcomes such as reducing labor, improving water and fertilizer efficiency, lowering operating costs and helping growers make better irrigation decisions,” he said through a spokesperson.
Automated vehicles like drones and self-driving tractors reduce labor costs and squeeze more production out of a dwindling workforce, ag tech companies say.
“Labor and energy are our biggest inputs,” Chef’s Garden permaculture farm manager and Bob Jones’ son Zach Jones told Straight Arrow.
Outsourcing work to machines frees up the family and their employees for more complex tasks, he told Straight Arrow.
Some farmers are willing to pay for convenience and time savings.
Angela and Kerry Knuth, who grow corn, soybeans and wheat on 2,200 acres near Mead, Nebraska, said they adopted self-driving tractors and never looked back.
“We wouldn’t want to be without it,” Angela Knuth told Straight Arrow.
Ag tech, when used properly, comes with benefits without an easily-assigned dollar value, she said.
“Time and convenience adds up to better productivity,” Angela Knuth said.
Why technology is important to Chef’s Garden
Patrons of expensive restaurants — the kind that drape their tables in white cloth and bathe diners in intimate candlelight — are the end consumers of Chef’s Garden’s specialty crops.
Restaurateurs seek the farm’s goods for a number of reasons, Zach Jones said, including its devotion to the health of soil from which its vegetables sprout.
“We fell into a niche back in the 80s,” he said. “We were selling produce in a farmer’s market and we ran into a chef who was looking for zucchini blossoms.”
The encounter resulted in a lucrative deal that set the farm on a path toward providing fancy restaurants with hard-to-find ingredients.
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“We’re trying to get the best quality produce that we can and we’ve found that soil biology is a huge aspect of that,” Zach Jones said.
Machines tending to the soil apply fertilizer and remove weeds with rigorous precision, maximizing soil fertility.
But deciding which machines to pay for isn’t easy, Bob Jones said.
“With software, we have to consider all options and decide which will provide the most value to the organization over the long term,” he said. “With hard assets [buildings and equipment] it is many times easier to evaluate the payback.”
How can farmers afford expensive new technology?
Cost calculations are moot for farmers who can’t afford new technology, experts say.
“Price is still a barrier to the adoption of technology,” said Kent Shannon, a field specialist for the University of Missouri’s college of agriculture.
Still, he told Straight Arrow, farmers who want to stock their farms with space-age gizmos have options. Ag tech is now advanced enough that less expensive machines from a decade ago benefit the nation’s food producers.
“We can still take the last generation of a piece of technology and use it today,” he said.
Grants are also available from agencies like the USDA, said Jen Lovequist, vice president of product for Terion AI.
Her company offers artificial intelligence farmers use to manage regenerative agriculture and conservation practices. While Terion is a for-profit company, its products can be covered by those grants, Lovequist said.
“Farmers can apply to receive funding for whatever practice they’re going to implement,” she said.
“Technology is very specific to each farm,” Lee stressed. “Even having a different size of farm can change the profitability of each technology. And as far as I know there isn’t any information source that can cover everything.”
Farmers must rely on one another instead. The best way to determine return on investment, Lee said, “is to talk to people who know the farming in your area and do your own research.”
The kind of technology farmers are looking for also matters, Hulinsky said.
“Most AI tools are relatively cheap,” he said. “Drones are expensive, and farmers need to make sure they get more out of them than they spend.”
For their part, the Knuths decided drones are only worth the price in certain situations.
“In a wide open field, I question the efficiency of it,” Angela Knuth said. Traditional methods of applying fertilizer or herbicides still work just fine, she said. But versatile drones can better handle fields filled with hills or trees.”
Although she added, “That’s my personal opinion.”
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