Agribot News Archive
Every story that has rotated off the Agribot News board, newest first. Each headline links to the original publisher, with a short summary written by Agribot News.
October 2026 (198)
Will Robots Replace Bees? New Robot Helps Pollinate Tomato
Greenhouse tomato growers can now lease Polly, a camera-guided robot from Arugga and Biobest that spots flowers ready for pollination and puffs air to shake the pollen loose. It is meant to back up bumblebees when short winter days or summer heat slow them down; trials showed 2% to 6% more fruit, and one unit can now cover about a hectare.
Surprising ways AI may improve your farm
A Wallaces Farmer outlook piece finds that farm size, not farmer age, divides who is using AI: operations under about 5,000 acres are more hesitant. Most farmers are using general chatbots for office work so far, while New Holland, Syngenta and Farm Credit Services of America describe uses from grain-quality data at the combine to faster chemistry discovery.
Kingman Ag autonomous tractors (also) for GNSS-denied environments
California-built Kingman Ag sells a retrofit kit that lets an ordinary orchard tractor drive itself using fisheye cameras instead of LiDAR, which struggles in the dust of berm blowing and nut harvest. It doesn't need GPS to steer, so it can work under thick canopy, handles front-mounted tools, and costs $20,000 to $30,000; about 40 units are running, mostly in California.
Drones agrícolas crecen 75% y apuestan por elevar la productividad y optimizar la riega
A Colombian importer of DJI farm drones says adoption in the country has grown about 75%, as growers of crops such as avocado, coffee, corn and soybeans use them to spray in minutes what takes a day with a backpack sprayer, while using less water. He also describes multispectral scouting and mapping pastures for cattle ranches, and frames drone work as a way to bring young people back to the farm. (Article in Spanish.)
Sistema CNA/Senar lança JoIA, inteligência artificial gratuita que apoia o produtor rural pelo WhatsApp
Brazil's national farm federation CNA and its training arm Senar offer JoIA, a free AI assistant that runs inside WhatsApp, so there is no app to install. Farmers can type, talk or send photos to get prices, regional weather, management tips and cost comparisons built on more than 17 years of production-cost data; cost tools start with dairy, beef, soybeans, corn, coffee, sugarcane, bananas and grapes. (Article in Portuguese.)
What is Tellia Lite? Voice AI Assistant Geared for Agriculture Set for Growth
Tellia Lite is a self-serve version of the California company's voice assistant for independent agronomists, crop advisors and small grower teams. Users talk into the app or send a WhatsApp voice note or photo, and it files the notes as dated, mapped field records they can search later by asking questions. It works offline and costs $20 per user per month for the first group of users.
Trade fair showcases agricultural robots and other magical things
A walk through FIRA USA in Yakima, where driverless tractors circled a mock orchard for hours and exhibitors showed weeders, pickers and drones. Vendors pitched the machines as a way to stretch short crews, a farmworker advocate asked what it means for people in the field, and the tree fruit research commission's director said a workable apple-picking robot is still a puzzle to solve.
A $1.15 million USDA-funded project could transform dairy nutrition through precision feeding technology
Virginia Tech's Mark Hanigan and researchers at four other universities have four years and $1.15 million from USDA to build a self-learning dairy feeding tool. It would use live data from robotic milking systems to match protein to each cow's needs instead of feeding a whole pen the same ration, with the aim of better income over feed cost and lower ammonia emissions.
USDA, NASA Partner to Improve Agricultural Data
USDA and NASA signed an agreement to share satellite observations, geospatial analysis and statistical methods as USDA updates its data systems. The goal is better crop acreage and yield estimates and a clearer read on crop conditions and natural hazards, and the deal leaves room for remote sensing, predictive modeling and machine learning work later.
Farm Financial Strain Raises Stakes for AI Adoption for Washington State Tree Fruit Growers
After several years of thin or negative returns, Washington apple and cherry growers want AI and sensor tools but can't easily afford to gamble on them, says the head of the state's tree fruit association. He points to Washington State University's AI work on weather, heat damage and spray timing as a lower-risk route that also keeps growers in control of their data.
AI and Business Management System Selection: 6 Questions Every Grower Should Ask
A checklist for greenhouse operations choosing business software they may run for a decade: does it understand plants as living inventory, does it tie production, sales and logistics together, and can it hold on to the know-how of experienced staff? It also explains the difference between an AI chatbot bolted on the side and built-in agents that carry out tasks, with security and human sign-off built in.
Macrie helps bring drone technology, AI research to local farms
A Hammonton, N.J., blueberry farm is hosting a Stockton University and county tech school project that flies drones with thermal and other imaging to follow honeybees and hive activity. The aim is to show blueberry growers where to place hives and how pollination actually moves across their fields.
Ohio agricultural spray drone association begins to take off
Ohio State's John Fulton and an ag aviation consultant are organizing a statewide group for spray drone operators after more than 30 businesses and farmers turned out to a first meeting at Farm Science Review. The planned association would speak up on rules and certification and share best practices, with Ohio already third in the nation for registered drone applicators.
Robots and AI are changing orchard work. What does that mean for jobs?
UC Davis researchers spent three years on 16 apple and other tree-fruit operations in California and Washington and found that robots and AI tools reshape orchard jobs more than they erase them. Growers and crews still have to adapt the machines to each block, and one manager's hand-adjusted yield estimate beat the camera system's count.
Watch as Niqo Robotics Unveils New Giant AI RoboWeeder
Niqo Robotics used FIRA USA to debut the RoboWeeder F50, a 50-foot hooded weeder that uses AI to target weeds and that the company calls the widest of its kind in North America. It is aimed at big specialty crop farms, including grass seed and turf growers, and orders are being taken now for 2027 delivery.
Procede Software Announces Strategic Acquisition of RIMSS, Bringing Together Decades of Dealer Technology Leadership
Truck-dealer software maker Procede has bought RIMSS, a San Antonio company whose dealer management system runs more than 200 farm, construction and truck dealer groups selling brands like Kubota, Case IH and AGCO. The combined company plans to serve dealers that sell and service both trucks and farm equipment.
Live from FIRA: New Tech Fights Herbicide-Resistant Weeds
In a short video from FIRA USA, Aigen's CEO shows the latest version of the company's solar-powered weeding robot, which uses AI to tell crops from weeds and a small hoe blade to dig the weeds out. The new model has upgraded computing and room for a fourth arm, and he pitches it as an answer for growers fighting herbicide-resistant weeds.
Drone technology opens new opportunities for crop management
Nutrien Ag Solutions' Thaddeus Bates tells RealAgriculture that drones can scout a field and then come back to treat just the spots that need it, especially on wet, awkward or hard-to-reach acres. He says rate, pressure and height still have to be calibrated as carefully as on a ground sprayer, and Nutrien is testing spray patterns as its drone business grows past 20,000 acres.
Penn Vet’s DAT-AI-LAB Launches 2 New Ag Tech Initiatives
A year after opening, Penn Vet's livestock behavior lab, which uses cameras, wearables and microphones in its swine and dairy barns, has a state grant for two new efforts. It will hold hackathons across Pennsylvania on real farm datasets and form a network of pork and dairy producers to test tools and plan a farmer-owned data cooperative.
Smart farm operating system goes from lab to tractor
FieldSim, software first built at Idaho National Laboratory for bioenergy crop studies, plans the most efficient path for a tractor across oddly shaped fields. Montana State tested it this summer on an autosteer tractor pulling a 90-foot sprayer, and two entrepreneurs have licensed it to sell as a way to cut fuel, fertilizer and time.
Tacna: Implementan robot pulverizador para fumigar cultivos en Jorge Basadre
The provincial government of Jorge Basadre in Peru's Tacna region has put a six-wheeled XAG R200 ground spraying robot to work for avocado, grape and cucurbit growers through its Palto Vid project. The remote-controlled unit carries a 250-liter tank, maps and follows its own routes under an operator's watch, and is meant to cut how much pesticide farmers are exposed to while improving coverage. (Article in Spanish.)
Drones en alfalfa: INTA detecta malezas con Machine Learning
Researchers at Argentina's INTA Catamarca and Marcos Juárez stations trained machine-learning models to tell alfalfa from weeds in photos taken with an ordinary RGB camera on a commercial drone, even when both are green and growing. On a 3.3-hectare test field, the method showed that less than half the ground was actually alfalfa, which helps flag worn-out stands that need renovation without buying costly multispectral cameras. (Article in Spanish.)
Hankinson farmer launches Agri Spray Drone Solutions
Joe Mauch, who farms about 6,000 acres near Hankinson, N.D., with his brother and son, is starting a business to sell spray drones, train pilots and do custom application, since the area has few drone dealers. The family bought two large drones this year after seeing tractors damage edible beans during desiccation, but licensing took longer than planned, so paid spraying will start in 2027.
Agricultoras de Freire suman un robot para cuidar sus frambuesas
Newen al Sur, a cooperative of women raspberry growers in Freire in southern Chile, has brought in an imported field robot that mows between rows and shreds pruned canes so the material goes back into the soil. Backed by CORFO, INDAP and INIA Carillanca, the project aims to lighten the members' workload and show that small growers can use the same kind of machines as large farms. (Article in Spanish.)
AI is changing farming: Are farmers asking the right questions?
Rafael Patron of AIPIA, an independent Italian association of AI professionals, urges farmers to quiz suppliers before installing AI tools such as camera-based cow monitoring. His checklist covers what conditions a system cannot detect, how often it raises false alarms, where footage is stored, whether it trains the vendor's model, and what data a farmer can take along when switching suppliers, with the answers put in writing.
Smart Tech in the Field: What’s Gaining Ground for Vegetable Growers
Extension specialists from Georgia, Arizona and Florida size up which smart tools vegetable growers are actually putting to work. Auto-guided tractors are now routine, camera-guided weeders, spot sprayers and lettuce thinners are spreading, and drones are moving from scouting into application, though cost and reliability still hold back smaller farms.
Mississippi State research prompts FAA review as drones expand in agriculture
Research at Mississippi State, which leads the FAA's Center of Excellence for drone research, has led the agency to review and revise some drone rules, according to WCBI. Farm drones are used more and more for spraying, field mapping and checking crops and cattle.
Cotton farmers turn to drones and AI to manage crop production
After three hard years in the cotton market, growers in Madison County, Ala., are leaning on drones, satellites and autonomous equipment to keep costs in check. In this short video, one farmer explains how he uses satellite chlorophyll data to control individual irrigation nozzles.
New Nebraska law paves way for ag data privacy
Starting Jan. 1, 2027, Nebraska's LB 525 will spell out that farmers own and control the data their operations generate, the first state law of its kind. Data privacy attorney Reed Freeman says there are no standard contract templates yet, so farmers will still need to negotiate rights with equipment and software companies, and he expects Missouri, Colorado and other states to follow.
Tellia opens its $20-a-month voice AI assistant to independent agronomists and growers
San Francisco ag-software start-up Tellia now sells a $20-a-month self-serve version of its voice assistant to independent agronomists and growers. The phone app records spoken field notes, even offline, to cut the paperwork after each field visit.
GUSS Advances Autonomous Spraying to Boost Farm Efficiency
GUSS co-founder Gary Thompson says the Kingsburg, Calif., company has improved how its driverless orchard sprayers navigate, so operators step in less often. GUSS has also redesigned the operator screen and added new performance reports, and its machines have now sprayed more than 3 million acres for growers short on labor.
Watching fruit ripen pays off: Seattle ag-tech startup Strella lands $4.25M
Strella, which tracks ripening in stored apples, pears, avocados and citrus with gas sensors and machine vision, raised another $4.25 million, bringing its total to $26.25 million. Its software combines those readings with origin, pack date and variety data to help cut spoilage, and it recently added kiwifruit.
AI could transform risk management for producers
CFTC Chairman Michael Selig tells Brownfield he expects AI to play a bigger part in how farmers and ranchers handle marketing risk, from timing hedges to getting trading advice without a broker. He says automating some of that work could cut costs, though new technology may shake up the market at first.
Data farmers: Ag-tech startup Aigen grows AI-generated weeds to train its solar-powered farm robots
Redmond, Wash.-based Aigen now trains its solar-powered weeding robots on a library of computer-generated weeds and crop plants it calls Alchemy. Teaching a robot a new crop used to take three to four years of photos and labeling, and now takes about a week, the CTO says. That opened the door to asparagus, hops, flower and lettuce growers, and the company says it is nearly sold out for 2027 after FIRA USA.
Spray Drone Group Seeks FCC Carve-Out as Westborough Votes to Ban Pads
The American Spray Drone Coalition estimates U.S. sales of new ag spray drones fell 59% in 2025, to about 3,700 units, and blames the customs hold on DJI shipments. It is asking the FCC to leave Part 137 spray drones out of its proposed ban on foreign drones and to allow two more years of spare-part imports.
Como a IA pode reduzir custos do agro no Brasil, segundo o Fórum Econômico Mundial
World Economic Forum president Alois Zwinggi told Exame that artificial intelligence could lower production costs for Brazilian farms by fine-tuning water and fertilizer use. The magazine cites McKinsey estimates of 10% to 20% operating savings and much larger cuts in crop protection spending, but notes that patchy rural connectivity and a lack of good farm data are still holding adoption back. (Article in Portuguese.)
Navigating the 'Triple Squeeze' in Precision Agriculture
Low crop prices, higher input costs and steep interest rates have farmers putting off upgrades and demanding proof of payback. Adam Gittins of HTS Ag in Iowa explains how precision dealers can use yield and savings data to show what the technology is really worth.
Drone Spraying Surges 340%
A new American Farm Bureau report says acres treated by ag drones are up more than 340% since 2023, reaching 16.4 million acres in 2025. In California, drones are finding work on steep vineyards where ground rigs struggle, and they are creating openings for custom applicators.
"Really livid" - Colorado community fights plan to spray weed killer from drones
Boulder County plans to drone-spray the herbicide indaziflam over hundreds of acres of rugged Red Hill to kill cheatgrass and lower wildfire risk, possibly starting in November. Neighboring farms and some scientists warn about runoff and harm to wildlife, and conservation groups are threatening a new lawsuit.
Q3 2026 AgTech Venture Capital Investment and Exit Round Up
Agtech startups raised $2.03 billion across 205 deals in the third quarter, roughly flat in dollars from the second quarter, while the number of deals jumped 30%. About a third of the money went to just two companies: a satellite operator with farm-monitoring uses and a plant-chemistry biotech.
Put Test Plot Data to Work in Your Seed Strategy
A hybrid that shone in a neighbor's test plot is a clue, not a sure bet. A Mustang Seeds agronomist explains how to read on-farm plot data, which lacks the replication of research trials, and use it alongside other information when ordering seed.
Kubota and Agtonomy introduce autonomous M5L tractor for specialty crops
Kubota North America and Agtonomy used FIRA USA in Yakima to launch a driverless version of the low-profile Kubota M5L, aimed at orchard and nut growers. It is the third tractor Agtonomy has automated, after the Bobcat CT4045 and the Kubota M5N, and it uses the same autonomy kit with the sensors placed to fit the machine.
Artificial Intelligence Tool Helps Farmers Reduce Livestock Feed Losses
Researchers with the National Animal Nutrition Program, including SDSU Extension's Hector Menendez, are building an interactive app that uses a random-forest machine-learning model to rate how likely a farm's harvest, storage, mixing and feeding practices are to waste feed. Silage comes first, with hay and grain to follow, and producers can change their inputs to see which practices lower the risk score.
FieldSense FSR500: lightweight spraying robot designed for easy farm repairs
Melbourne start-up FieldSense plans to bring out its all-electric FSR500 field robot in early 2027. The 600 kg machine carries up to 500 kg, including a 300-litre spray tank, and is built from off-the-shelf parts farmers can swap themselves. Field trials are running, but its working capacity and planned auto-refill and battery-swap systems are not yet proven.
New National Cover Crop Survey Digs into Drone Usage Trends, Challenges & Benefits
For the first time, the national cover crop survey asked about drones. Of 459 cover crop users, 2.8% seeded with their own drones and 13.5% hired a drone pilot. Most named easier timing as the main reason, and payloads keep growing as ag-specific drones get bigger.
AI-powered app could help dairy farmers identify calf pain and improve welfare
Michigan State University researchers are using video and behavior data from calves during disbudding to train AI that can spot pain. The work feeds a mobile app meant to alert farmers when an individual animal needs more pain relief, which could cut unneeded medication and help with labor planning.
AGCO to deploy Agility Digit humanoid in Kansas factory
Farm equipment maker AGCO has signed a deal to put Agility Robotics' Digit humanoid to work at its Hesston, Kan., plant in a pilot starting in 2027. AGCO says the robots will take on repetitive, strenuous or hazardous jobs alongside its workers rather than replace them.
Data Gathering Helps Tennessee Farm Improve Overall Efficiency
A Tennessee cotton, corn and soybean grower walks through how his family went from changing ground speed to vary growth-regulator rates to variable-rate everything. Yearly 2.5-acre grid soil samples, yield maps and NDVI imagery go into software that stacks years of data, and a 10-year comparison credited the program with cutting fertilizer use 40% while yields kept rising.
How embracing AI can help build trust in Canada's food system
More Canadians now ask AI tools about food and farming instead of searching websites. At the Public Trust Summit in Toronto, strategist Ryan Anderson argued that farm groups need their credible information to show up in those AI answers, or they risk going unheard.
Researchers Study How AI Could Improve Weed Management
Weed scientists at Ole Miss and Cornell sized up three AI-guided weed tools: laser weeders, robotic cultivators and spot sprayers. They could cut herbicide use, crop injury and hand weeding, which matters most to organic and specialty growers, but price tags run from roughly $75,000 to more than $1 million, and the authors flag possible ecological downsides as well.
Case Western Reserve University researcher will use USDA grant to build more secure AI programs to help small farmers
Many small and mid-size farmers hold off on AI tools because they worry their records could be used against them on prices or insurance. Cybersecurity professor Erman Ayday has a four-year USDA grant of nearly $600,000 to build a walled-off data 'sandbox' where AI can learn from farm information without revealing whose it is, working with a University of Wisconsin-Madison co-investigator and with farmers directly.
Reservoir launches new agricultural robotics incubator for Washington growers
Ag venture fund and innovation center Reservoir is teaming up with Washington State University's Prosser research center, the Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission and the Tri-City Development Council on a robotics incubator. Startups will put their machines to work in real orchards, vineyards and berry fields, targeting hard-to-automate crops like apples, cherries, blueberries, wine grapes and hops as farm labor gets scarcer and costlier.
From Irrigation to Robotics: UAPB Research Examines AI’s Growing Role in Agriculture
A University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff team led by Shahidul Islam went through 95 studies from 2021 to 2025 on AI in farming. They see the field shifting from one-off tools to linked systems of sensors, models and machines that act in real time, with smart irrigation, early pest and disease detection and greenhouse control among the most promising uses, while real hurdles still keep many tools from wide adoption.
A high-flying solution to establishing cover crops after corn | Farming Forward
Aylmer, Ontario, farmer Leon Passmore is in his third year of flying cereal rye into standing corn through Living Labs Ontario. His drone-seeded rye grew taller than rye drilled after harvest and gave his cow-calf pairs extra fall grazing. A provincial soil specialist explains what makes it work: seeding around the dent stage, getting ahead of rain, and starting with a lighter rate.
Seattle ag-tech startup Carbon Robotics reduces workforce, citing economic conditions
Carbon Robotics, the Seattle company behind the tractor-pulled LaserWeeder that uses AI cameras to find weeds and burn them out with lasers, has trimmed staff across several departments in the U.S. and overseas. It didn't say how many jobs were cut, only that about 275 people remain and that costs had to be brought in line with the wider economy. The move follows a fast growth stretch that included an autonomous tractor kit and, by its CEO's account, more than $100 million in revenue.
Startup impulsada por ProInnóvate optimiza el riego agrícola para incrementar el valor exportable de las frutas
Peruvian startup YakuSmart, backed by the government's ProInnóvate program, combines field sensors, satellite images, soil tests and WhatsApp voice notes from farm staff, then uses AI models to tell export growers how much to irrigate each block and when. It monitors about 120 hectares of table grapes, avocados, pomegranates, asparagus and blueberries; one Arequipa pomegranate grower raised its exportable fruit value 15 percent, and an Ica grape farm used about 12,000 cubic meters less water in a season. (Article in Spanish.)
Esse robô trabalha sozinho no silo e pode salvar vidas, tecnologia chegou ao Brasil
The Grain Weevil, a remote-controlled robot developed in the United States, is now on sale in Brazil. Instead of wheels or tracks it rides on spinning screw-shaped drums that carry it across stored corn, leveling piles and breaking up crusted grain so workers don't have to walk on a surface that can hide a cavity and bury them. It carries a camera, and the selling points are safer bins and more even aeration, not replacing other storage equipment. (Article in Portuguese.)
En el aire también: Casafe publicó un libro que promueve las buenas prácticas para la aplicación de agroquímicos con drones
With spray drones spreading across Argentine farms, crop-protection industry group CASAFE has published a technical handbook on applying products by drone. Written by agronomist Federico Martín Elorza with the University of Buenos Aires ag school, and backed by INTA and Senasa, it covers flight height, speed, droplet size, volume, swath width and safe weather windows, with an emphasis on limiting drift and keeping application records. (Article in Spanish.)
Mosaic lança calculadora para ajudar produtores a projetar rentabilidade da safra
Fertilizer maker Mosaic has launched a free calculator that lets growers compare fertility programs before they buy. After entering basics such as a soil test, the tool returns in under two minutes suggested fertilizer and biological products, lime and gypsum needs, and a projected economic return at current market prices, so cost and payback can be weighed side by side while input prices swing. (Article in Portuguese.)
Pecuarista poderá identificar gado pelo focinho usando apenas o celular; entenda nova tecnologia
At a Cooperfeira producer meeting in Feira de Santana, Bahia, the company Raiz showed a phone app that tells individual cattle and buffalo apart by the pattern of the muzzle, much like a fingerprint. Each animal's record can hold vaccinations, weights, feed and moves between farms, the app works offline in the pasture, and companion tools track costs per arroba as Brazil tightens traceability rules. (Article in Portuguese.)
Farm drones may lower costs for growers, but will shoppers save too?
This Associated Press explainer says scouting and spray drones can save labor and chemicals and reach fields too wet for tractors, but the savings vary by crop and aren't guaranteed; one Chinese corn study found growers sprayed more often and spent more on pesticide overall. And since farmers keep only about 18.5 cents of each U.S. food dollar, drones may do more for grocery prices by preventing crop losses than by trimming spray bills.
FFA drone program shows students the sky is the limit
Climax Shelly Public School in Climax, Minnesota, is one of 11 schools chosen for the Minnesota FFA Drone Grant Program, which provided classroom drone kits and teacher training. Ag teacher Travis Johnson starts ninth graders on FAA rules and safe flying, then takes them outside to fly small camera drones while explaining how farmers use drones to check crops for damage and pests and to spray weeds. His verdict so far: the students pick up flying faster than the adults did.
Inteligência artificial no agronegócio avança na previsão de fretes e no planejamento logístico
Researchers at the University of São Paulo's Esalq ag school fed machine-learning models about 16,000 Brazilian truck-freight records from 2022, factoring in distance, cargo, diesel price, road quality and how close a route runs to rail or river terminals. The best model landed within roughly R$27 per ton on that data, and distance mattered most. Similar models are being used to place fertilizer blending plants, size corn-ethanol truck fleets and plan lower-emission soybean shipping. (Article in Portuguese.)
How Layering Farm Data Can Help Explain Yield Problems
Putting yield maps, soil tests, imagery and application records side by side in one farm-management platform can expose causes that stay hidden when each layer is viewed on its own. In one case, a spring field-health image showed every tile line in the drained half of a field while the untiled half sat yellow and waterlogged, which all but settled whether the grower would finish tiling. The piece walks through how to compare layers and turn what they show into decisions.
Picker AgRobotics Targets 95% Fruit Capture With Gripper-Free Harvesting Arms
Instead of a claw that grabs, retracts and drops each piece of fruit, Israeli startup Picker AgRobotics uses hollow, bendable arms that weave through the canopy, snip the stem and let the fruit roll down inside the arm into a regular harvest bin. Now on its fourth field-tested generation, the robot uses onboard cameras to judge each fruit, and the company says it should work in existing orchards without replanting to trellised, high-density rows.
After Drones Fall Short, Researchers Build a Ground Robot to Catch Soybean Disease Early
Southern Illinois University engineers first flew hyperspectral and multispectral cameras over soybean plots, but the drone couldn't gather enough data from the undersides of leaves. So they built a four-wheeled, battery-powered ground robot instead. Funded by the Illinois Soybean Center, the project is meant to flag frogeye leaf spot, which can cut yields 60 to 70 percent, before symptoms show, while a fungicide pass can still pay off.
UAAAN presenta robot agrícola para siembra de maíz y frijol
Researchers at Antonio Narro Agrarian University in Coahuila showed federal science officials a prototype robot built to plant corn and beans on plots under five hectares, the size most Mexican corn growers farm. Two years and 5 million pesos in federal funding went into it, and the team now has the go-ahead to seek a manufacturer so it can sell for far less than imported machinery. The goal is to fill labor gaps left by rural migration, not replace workers. (Article in Spanish.)
IA chega ao agro, mas depende de dados organizados e confiança para avançar
Farm-software maker TOTVS showed AI agents that work inside its management system, one checking field activity logs against past records and flagging numbers that look off, another pulling scattered data together to close out production costs. Company executives told the paper the tools only help when a farm's data is organized and trustworthy, and that a person still has to confirm any correction. (Article in Portuguese.)
Tomar un crédito según las toneladas que se van a producir: el aporte de la IA al financiamiento agropecuario
Rosario startup Certera combines AI, satellite data, weather and soil analysis to project expected yield, production risk, gross margin and breakeven yield for one specific field instead of a whole county. Founder Gonzalo Goñi says that lets a grower show lenders how many tons a field can really produce, build a credit file and seek capital-market financing rather than relying only on credit from input suppliers. (Article in Spanish.)
Uso de drones en el campo: capacitación, precisión y un servicio post venta cercano al productor
At Expo Brandsen in Buenos Aires province, a Joma Drones rep argued that anyone can fly a spray drone but few apply well: with mixes of only about 7 liters per hectare, adjuvant choice, tank-mix quality and drift control decide the result. His team, with 20,000-plus hectares of drone work behind it, is running an official DJI Academy course in Chascomús in early November and says the mid-size T55 and T70P suit the Salado basin best. (Article in Spanish.)
Drones e agricultura de precisão: quantos produtores realmente usam e qual o retorno comprovado
Brazil has about 13,000 farm drones registered with its aviation agency, but industry estimates put tens of thousands in actual use, mostly flown by service providers rather than owned by growers. This explainer tallies reported returns, such as 20% to 50% input savings, bigger cuts with spot herbicide work, and payback in one to two and a half years, and notes that a shortage of trained pilots keeps many farms from seeing those gains. (Article in Portuguese.)
Por Que os Japoneses Estão Ensinando Robôs Humanoides a Colher Quiabo?
Robot-control software firm Orboh and Toyota Auto Body's research arm spent last summer testing whether an off-the-shelf humanoid could work a real okra field in Kagoshima, Japan, instead of building a custom machine for every row width. Using a chest camera and AI vision, the robot spotted irregular pods and grabbed them outdoors in wind and sun; it hit 16 of 20 grabs in simulation, though the cutting blade wasn't ready in time. The pitch: humanoids could ease labor gaps for small, aging farms. (Article in Portuguese.)
From spreadsheets to autonomous tractors: AI's growing role in farming
An Estonian ranch manager says AI went from fumbling her Excel work in spring to building all her farm spreadsheets by harvest, though she double-checks everything it produces. A university ag-engineering researcher sees the bigger payoff in pulling years of field records into models, while autonomous tractors, field robots and spray drones are still held back by safety testing and regulation.
Drones, AI & UTI Research: The Future of Wisconsin Cranberry Farming
The head of the Wisconsin State Cranberry Growers Association says members are curious about AI for crop management but won't gamble their livelihoods on it yet. Growers are already leaning on drones, and he pictures overnight scans that tell a farmer by morning which beds need more water or got too cold, which could end long nights on frost watch. He also covers new cranberry health research that could lift demand.
They use a drone for rice fumigation in Los Palacios... "but where is the rice?"
Cuban state media hailed a Chinese-built, 55-liter autonomous spray drone that has treated more than 250 hectares of seed rice in Los Palacios, Pinar del Río, covering 62 hectares in a single day where crews lack nozzles and backpack sprayers. Readers answered with sarcasm, pointing out that the crop is headed for seed rather than store shelves while Cuba grows only a small share of the rice it eats.
Cameras That Catch What People Miss
Missouri's digital ag extension center rounds up new studies where AI cameras were checked against careful human observers. In a year-long farrowing trial, cameras tracked how often sows shifted position, helping show why straw bedding cut piglet crushing roughly in half; a parlor camera matched human milking-time measurements and flagged hygiene slips people missed; and new cow-tracking software held identities in a crowded barn, though not yet fast enough for live alerts.
Greeneye Technology Establishes North American Headquarters in Salina, Kansas Following Record 2026 Season
Greeneye, whose camera-and-AI system lets sprayers hit only the weeds, is putting its North American base in Salina, Kansas, after a season in which equipped machines covered more than 500,000 acres in 12 states. The company reports better than 98% weed detection and an average 81% cut in non-residual herbicide, now supports eight crops from corn to sorghum, and plans to add oats, sugar beets, peanuts and canola in 2027.
Revolución Agtech: la startup que agiliza seguros agropecuarios y ganó un concurso tecnológico
Suyana Climate Insurance beat 44 startups from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia to win Nera's AgTech Revolution 2026. Its parametric crop cover uses satellite imagery, climate models and AI to pay out automatically when drought or flood thresholds hit, with no adjuster visits. Finalist Bovitag showed an offline cattle-traceability app that links to any wand reader and handles SENASA paperwork. (Article in Spanish.)
Terminus Capital Partners Makes Majority Investment In PickTrace To Accelerate Specialty Agriculture Platform
Growth investor Terminus Capital Partners has taken a majority stake in PickTrace, whose software covers crew onboarding, time and productivity tracking, payroll and labor compliance, and field operations for specialty growers. Founded by brothers raised on a Southern California blueberry, avocado and citrus farm, PickTrace plans to broaden the platform and move into new markets.
Paradigm Inputs Builds a Digital Route From Manufacturer to Farm
Calgary startup Paradigm Inputs pairs a generic crop-input supply chain with software for independent local brokers who pool farmers' orders. The platform handles invoicing, payments, receivables, inventory and sales-margin dashboards, plus an AgAssist product guide and label library, all aimed at trimming distribution overhead so western Canadian farmers pay less for inputs.
BloomX raises $13M for robots that pollinate avocados and blueberries alongside bees
Israeli startup BloomX closed a $13 million Series A to grow its robotic pollination service, which works with bees rather than replacing them: a vibrating unit for blueberries and an electrostatic pollen collector for avocado orchards. It reports roughly 20% average yield gains for clients including Peruvian growers and plans to expand in Peru and Mexico before entering the U.S. with almond and blueberry farms.
Especialista alerta: drone moderno não resolve tudo
A Brazilian application-technology manager warns that a spray drone's precise routes, flight height and programmed rates can't rescue a badly mixed tank. Product incompatibility, the wrong mixing order, water pH and hardness, droplet size and drift can all leave uneven coverage, so he urges operators to learn adjuvants and mixing before trusting the hardware. (Article in Portuguese.)
The Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Agricultural Credit Underwriting and Scoring
Three agricultural economists writing for Southern Ag Today warn lenders against letting AI make farm loan calls on its own. Models trained on past data can shortchange beginning farmers and specialty-crop or agritourism operations with thin or unusual records, and can misread normal patterns such as dairies' low working capital, so the authors want human judgment and local context kept in the process.
From Crop Monitoring to Aerial Seeding: Drones Find New Roles in Argentine Agriculture
Commercial UAV News follows Argentine growers taking drones past scouting into spraying and seeding. A La Pampa agronomist splits work between crop-dusting planes near the airport and a DJI T100 elsewhere to save money and limit drift near sensitive neighbors, with mapping flights deciding whether a whole field needs treatment, while INTA's national survey tries to measure real adoption.
Spray drones provide new business opportunities for Iowa farmer
Grinnell, Iowa, farmer Braxton Brand priced out a helicopter, bought a spray drone instead, and a wet 2024 turned it into a custom business. Brand Aerial now flies three drones, aiming for 10,000 to 15,000 acres a year, mostly fungicide on corn and soybeans at about $14 an acre, and he wants to add more pasture and cover-crop work.
Uso de drones na aplicação de defensivos ganha espaço nos pomares de maçã em São Joaquim
In São Joaquim, Santa Catarina, Campoar Drones Agrícolas is flying every crop-protection pass of the season on an 11-hectare Maçãs Padilha apple orchard, now past its 14th application. In a rainy region, drones let growers catch spray windows without waiting for soaked ground to dry or risking tractor rollovers. (Article in Portuguese.)
Cattle tags save time, labor for producers
Speaking at a Crops and Cattle event in Kansas City, a Ceres Tag sales lead and rancher Brandi Buzzard explained how the company's solar-powered tags send location and behavior data straight to satellites, with no Wi-Fi or cell signal needed, and pipe it into ranch management software and phone apps. Buzzard relies on alerts when a cow strays from a set grazing area; the platform also estimates pasture feed intake.
USDA Modernization Targets Farm Records and Loan Access
USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden says the department has retired its old acreage-reporting software for a new system built by Palantir. Next up are Farm Service Agency and Rural Development loan systems, so borrowers could check balances, payments and loan status online instead of calling or visiting a county office. Savings from office consolidation are slated to pay for the upgrades.
Grupo Moreno se destaca em automação agrícola e tecnologia no MasterCana Brasil & Award 2026
São Paulo sugarcane group Grupo Moreno, which crushes about 11 million tons a season, is being honored for farm automation after rolling out the AxiAgro data platform. The system automatically pairs harvesters with haul-out tractors, logs machines, operators, fields and loads, and feeds it all into weighing records, ending handwritten load tickets and letting managers compare estimated and actual cane yields. (Article in Portuguese.)
Inteligência artificial no agronegócio: 83% das agtechs brasileiras já utilizam a tecnologia
The Radar Agtech Brasil survey from PwC, Embrapa and partners finds AI built into the products or processes of 83% of the 2,075 Brazilian agtechs it mapped, and central to the offering for 35%. Uses run from agronomic recommendations and yield models to management platforms and task-automating agents; the piece argues training people is now what turns farm data into results. (Article in Portuguese.)
Venezuela levanta suspensión del uso de drones en el sector agrícola
Venezuela has lifted the temporary ban on farm drones that had been in place since 2025, letting growers use them again for fertilizing, irrigation work and crop checks. The agriculture minister says operators still need civil aviation permits, certification, liability insurance and training, and the government is working with customs to ease imports of drones, parts and batteries. (Article in Spanish.)
Inteligencia artificial en el agro: la empresa argentina que transforma datos del campo en negocios
Dymaxion, part of Argentina's GDM seed group, sells a data platform called Optimus to seed, input and equipment companies, mixing AI with trial results, drone plant scoring, satellite and weather feeds. It already works with major U.S. seed firms and big machinery makers, using the data their products generate to sharpen development and spot risks in the field. (Article in Spanish.)
EXCLUSIVE: Ag Drone Use More Than Quadruples in Two Years, Farm Bureau Economist Says
Farm Bureau economist Bernt Nelson tells RFD-TV that U.S. acres treated by drones jumped from about 3.7 million in 2023 to more than 16 million in 2025. He sees drones filling gaps where ground rigs and planes can't get in on time rather than replacing them, and points to custom spraying, cover-crop seeding, scouting and checking cattle as side businesses for young producers.
AGCO demonstrates new technology at Greenview Grain Farm in Frankfort
AGCO's harvest tour stopped at Greenview Grain Farms in Frankfort, Indiana, to show a grain-cart tractor running with nobody in the cab. The combine operator handles both machines, and the tractor stays inside mapped field boundaries, entering only ground the combine has already harvested. The tour hits 11 family farms in six states.
Saga Robotics' Thorvald Platform Named to TIME's List of the Best Inventions of 2026
TIME put Saga Robotics' Thorvald on its 2026 Best Inventions list. The self-driving robot rolls through vineyards and strawberry tunnels at night, hitting plants with UV-C light to hold back powdery mildew so growers can cut fungicide passes. This year it is working about 2,500 acres of California grapes and roughly a third of the UK's tabletop strawberries, and it gathers crop data on every trip.
El Niño se lleva bien con los drones: cómo aprovecharlos en un contexto de mayores lluvias
With an El Niño season threatening soggy fields across Argentina, agronomists argue spray drones can keep weed and disease control on schedule when ground rigs would bog down. A Bidcom Agro researcher says flying is the easy part; the real work is training to set application parameters correctly, because waiting for fields to dry lets weeds grow bigger and harder to kill. (Article in Spanish.)
New tool helps producers track crop water use
Lethbridge Polytechnic's Irrimap is a web tool that turns public data into evapotranspiration estimates for anything from one field to a full section, giving irrigators a read on crop water demand to guide how long and how much to water. It runs on a phone, tablet or computer and is being folded into crop-input optimization tools, with federal and Saskatchewan funding.
AI Chatbots Are Giving Farmers New Choices
This Chicago Council analysis looks at how phone-based AI advisers are reaching small farms that extension agents never could, answering questions by text, voice or photo in local languages. The authors credit tools like FarmerChat with saving growers time and changing practices, but say the payoff depends on cheap connectivity, farmer-focused content and rules that keep advice free of sales bias.
Ingleside Dairy Farm Combines Family Tradition with Robotic Milking
At Jennifer Leech's family dairy in Rockbridge County, Virginia, Holsteins walk into robotic milking stalls on their own schedule, some as often as six times a day. Lasers line up the cups, neck tags identify each cow and pellets are portioned by lactation stage, while collar data on rumination and activity flags heat and early illness. The herd ships more than 3,000 gallons a day.
Pulverização seletiva com inteligência artificial avança
Brazilian maker Eirene Industrial says its SaveFarm system, with home-grown cameras, hardware and onboard AI that tell sprayers where to apply, now runs on more than 450 machines. Sales are up over 25% this year despite a soft farm market, and the company is opening a branch and parts hub in Cuiabá while pushing further into Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. (Article in Portuguese.)
From lab to tractor: INL software aims to save farmers fuel and fertilizer by mapping smarter routes across fields
FieldSim, path-planning software first written at Idaho National Laboratory for a bioenergy study, plots the most efficient route through odd-shaped and hilly fields and feeds it to a tractor's autosteer. After a July test with a 90-foot sprayer near Bozeman, two startup founders are licensing it with a goal of signing their first paying Montana farms by year's end.
WSU experts to share high-tech solutions for tree fruit at FIRA USA
Washington State University researchers will bring AI robotic pruning, autonomous sprayer work and smart-irrigation tools to FIRA USA in Yakima on Oct. 20–22, where the college is co-organizing Innovation Day and Campus Day for tree-fruit growers facing labor shortages. Faculty and Extension educators will also run a Spanish-language session for farm workers and a Horticulture for Engineers pre-event so robot makers learn how orchards actually operate.
EAVision J150: ajuste o tamanho das gotas para diferentes necessidades de aplicação
Distributor Agrosure highlights the EAVision J150 spray drone’s ability to set droplet size independently per nozzle and per side—for example 100 microns on one boom and 300 on the other—so Brazilian operators can thicken outer droplets on field edges to cut drift while keeping an inner spray pattern. Weather, product and label rules still decide the final setup. (Article in Portuguese.)
In the Right to Repair Revolt, Nebraska Leads With Farm-Data Ownership Law
Civil Eats revisits Nebraska’s Agricultural Data Privacy Act—the first U.S. state law treating farm-generated agronomic, weather, land, livestock and machine data as the producer’s proprietary asset, barring third parties from selling it without separate written consent. Contracts must catch up by Jan. 1, 2027; critics note the statute still allows processing and AI-derived insights and leaves enforcement to the attorney general rather than farmer lawsuits.
PerPlant lands Valtra deal to put its AI crop sensor on tractors straight from the factory
Danish startup PerPlant’s roof-mounted dual-camera AI sensor will ship factory-fitted on selected new Valtra tractors in Europe this month, scanning crops for spot spraying and variable-rate fertilizer, fungicide and growth regulator day or night. The firm already maps fields in Chile and Argentina, is integrating with U.S. precision brand Ag Leader after Farm Progress Show demos, and is building Nexus so advisers can tap that field data for their own tools.
Drones na pecuária: Cooperfeira apresenta tecnologia de pulverização com custo médio de R$ 120 por hectare
At a Café com o Produtor meeting in Feira de Santana, Bahia, cooperative Cooperfeira walked cattle producers through pasture spray drones that map paddocks first, then apply products at about R$120 per hectare on average, with talk of herd counts from the air and the need for MAPA, ANAC and DECEA compliance. Organizers pitched less water and chemical waste plus access where ground sprayers struggle. (Article in Portuguese.)
RAUCH Expands Fertilizer Precision Farming with XactMap and AI-Powered XCheck App Integration
German spreader maker RAUCH, with FarmBlick, added XactMap satellite biomass planning and XCheck AI tray-photo calibration to its RAUCH App so growers can build variable-rate fertilizer maps and check real spreading patterns from a phone photo. RAUCH says a distribution test that once took more than 15 minutes can drop under seven, with settings pushed to compatible machines over Wi-Fi or agrirouter.
Cornell startup tests apple-sorting robots on Finger Lakes farms
Cornell-linked startup Ficio is piloting FieldSorter with apple growers in Ontario and Wayne counties, New York: a computer-vision rig that grades fruit for bruises, punctures and clipped stems while it moves through orchard rows and ties each grade to the tree it came from. The aim is to tell growers at harvest which apples can go fresh-market and which should go elsewhere, instead of waiting until packing-house inspection after cold storage; the system is still in development with no published savings figures.
South Korea's WiseLake brings AI-assisted PigOS farm management app to iPhone
WiseLake, maker of Korea’s PigPlan pig-farm ERP, has put its PigOS management app on iPhone so producers can track pigs weaned per sow per year, non-productive days and farrowing rate from a phone. Core herd metrics are free; AI analytics sit behind paid add-ons aimed at tightening sow productivity decisions.
Após comprar TBDC, Totvs prepara “safra" de agentes de IA para ampliar presença no agro
Brazilian software giant Totvs, about a year after buying Mato Grosso farm-software firm TBDC for R$80 million, is building AI agents that daily audit field activity logs for odd entries and help automate monthly production-cost closings that can now take a week. Pilots with selected customers are starting, with a wider release aimed at early 2027 inside existing Totvs agro products. (Article in Portuguese.)
Embrapa fecha acordo com a China para levar IA à agricultura familiar
Embrapa and four Chinese partners signed a five-year memorandum, sealed during a September mission, to co-develop AI, IoT and smart farm machines for Brazil's family farmers, including pilot service centers in settlements and work on fruit, vegetables, corn, soy and rice. Embrapa president Silvia Massruhá framed it as closing the digital gap between small and large growers rather than simply importing Chinese gear. (Article in Portuguese.)
Oxbo’s AutoHarvest puts cameras in control of crop quality
Dutch maker Oxbo is proving AutoHarvest on a prototype pea viner in Scotland: five cameras watch losses and crop quality and nudge threshing and cleaning settings when split peas or trash climb too high. Berry harvesters already use the system in the field; pea machines are still pre-series through 2027, with potato lifters next on the development list.
Kubota Brings Precision Guidance for Smaller Machines
Kubota unveiled WorkSmart Autosteer at the Farm Progress Show in Boone, Iowa, a dealer-installed guidance system built for compact tractors, utility machines, mowers and RTVs rather than only big row-crop tractors. Operators keep control while the system holds the line; WAAS gives about six-to-eight-inch pass-to-pass accuracy with no subscription, and a PPP option tightens that to roughly one inch for specialty crops.
AGCO: focus on Autonomy, AI, and Mixed-Fleet Solutions to Enhance Farmer Profitability
At its Tech Day on Stewart Farms near Yorkville, Illinois, AGCO showed PTx FarmENGAGE for mixed-brand fleets, the Panorama intelligence layer, and Aurora, an AI assistant that answers farm-data questions by voice or text. Demos also paired Fendt IDEAL combines with OutRun autonomous grain carts and AI-targeted SymphonyVision spraying on a Rogator 900, aimed at labor-tight harvest windows.
Harvested Robotics is building a tractor-mounted laser weeder for Indian farms
Hyderabad startup Harvested Robotics is beta-testing RAKSHAK, a PTO-powered implement whose cameras tell weeds from crop and whose lasers burn up to about 100 weeds a minute, with no chemicals or internet connection needed. Trials are on cauliflower now and potatoes next, aimed at small row-crop farmers who already own a tractor, with production targeted for 2027.
More driverless tech for Amos Power’s 85hp electric tractor
California farm-software firm FarmX has bought Iowa's Amos Power, maker of a roughly 3-ton electric tractor on twin triangular tracks that runs driverless for tillage, planting, weeding and mowing in fields and orchards. FarmX plans to pair it with its sensor-based autonomy kits, which steer without satellite guidance, and says new funding will help scale up manufacturing.
Autonomous tractors stay stalled in CA agriculture
California still enforces a 1977 Cal/OSHA rule requiring someone at the controls of moving self-propelled farm equipment, so driverless tractors already at work in Iowa and Washington can't run freely there. Growers and the Farm Bureau want the rule modernized, while labor advocates want more safety data and worry about tractor drivers' jobs, and a state advisory process has yet to settle it.
Produtores do Oeste baiano apostam em drones para ganhar eficiência
With western Bahia's soybean planting window open and acreage expected to grow about 4% to 2.3 million hectares, growers are adding spray drones to hit weed patches, pest hot spots and wet ground that sprayers can't cross. A local DJI Agras dealer says trained pilots, refill logistics and nearby service matter as much as the aircraft. (Article in Portuguese.)
Se certifica una nueva generación de pilotos de dron agrícola
Twenty-three students and recent graduates of the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes' agricultural sciences center earned international ag-drone pilot certification through training with DJI partner Refadrone, on top of 20 certified last year. School leaders pitched the new pilots as the farm's eyes in the sky for mapping, pest scouting and covering hundreds of hectares in a morning. (Article in Spanish.)
Kubota and Kilter strengthen their collaboration for agricultural robots
Kubota signed a Europe-wide agreement to sell and support Kilter's AX-1, a compact autonomous robot that finds individual weeds in vegetable and herb beds and treats each one with a tiny drop of herbicide. The AX-1 already works on farms in Germany and the Netherlands, France and the UK are being studied next, and Kubota's parts center now stocks its spares.
Una startup fue elegida entre 44 por su tecnología para asegurar al agro frente al clima
Suyana Climate Insurance won Nera's AgTech Revolution open call in Buenos Aires among 44 startups from Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia with parametric farm insurance that pays automatically when satellite imagery, global climate models and its own AI hit drought or flood thresholds, without individual loss adjusting. The firm already works in Colombia and Bolivia and plans to sell through insurers, co-ops and lenders to reach smaller growers. (Article in Spanish.)
The best on-farm use I've found for artificial intelligence
Agweek editor Jenny Schlecht, who farms near Medina, North Dakota, explains how photographing a used baler's unfamiliar monitor and quizzing Google's AI tools on her phone finally decoded its settings when no manual turned up. The same trick helped track down an overheating part and a twine-tying glitch on an older baler, which she sees as AI's most practical farm job for now.
‘Novel solution’: Manitoba researchers develop technology to make farming autonomous
A University of Manitoba mechanical engineering team led by Jay Wang is building decision-making software that blends AI with physics so tractors and other field machines can cope with surprises and eventually run without a driver. The goal is to retrofit equipment farmers already own, cutting labour and fuel use.
Are virtual fences ready for Michigan cattle farms? Early adopters in Reed City share praise
Reed City, Michigan cattlemen Jack Thornton and Lew Deline are among the state's first Nofence virtual-fence adopters, drawing GPS paddocks in a phone app so collars beep then lightly shock cows that push the line, letting Thornton rotate grazing even from Florida. New collars on preorder run a little over $200 each plus about $40–$50 a year for the app; neighbors and the Michigan Forage Council call the tech promising but still watch cost and reliability.
Cele se subió a la ola de los drones agrícolas en Argentina
Seeder maker Cele of Armstrong, Santa Fe, has started a Cele Drones division with Córdoba-based Grafin Agro to sell Vector AGR spraying and spreading drones made by China’s Heilongjiang Huida Technology, including a 70-liter HD580 and a 150-liter V180, taking on DJI and XAG. (Article in Spanish.)
Drones, datos y decisiones: claves para avanzar hacia una agricultura de precisión
Mendoza is putting drones to work in its vineyards: an INTA Mendoza AI model that finds grape clusters in drone images was named best scientific paper at the recent International Drone Congress in Tucumán, and the provincial plant-health agency Iscamen now uses drones to release pheromones against the grapevine moth. (Article in Spanish.)
Enhanced AI Vision System Teaches Greenhouse Robots to Actually Pick the Fruit
Engineers at Portugal's University of Minho built a camera-plus-depth system that checks whether a robot arm can really reach and grip a tomato, strawberry or pepper before it tries, rather than just spotting the fruit. In greenhouse-style trials it more than doubled picking success compared with a standard detection setup.
Company outlines U.S. manufacturing roadmap and looks ahead to the future of spray drone technology
Boonville, Missouri-based Agri Spray Drones says it is shifting from distributing spray drones to manufacturing and tech development, with a phased U.S. roadmap through 2028 for assembly, software, frames and more domestic parts, and its next spray platform already in production. CEO Taylor Moreland also pitched a Drone Dock that automates refills so spray jobs lean toward whole-operation autonomy rather than one pilotless aircraft.
Tecnologia criada por cassilandense pode economizar bilhões em fertilizantes no Agro
A startup led by UEMS agronomy professor Renato Lustosa Sobrinho is developing Phosphogenesis IA, which uses AI to pick the soil microbes most likely to free up phosphorus already locked in Cerrado soils for a given field, so Mato Grosso do Sul growers can buy less phosphate fertilizer. The prototype just won about R$140,000 in Centelha MS support. (Article in Portuguese.)
Riego de precisión con monitoreo satelital
At Expo Maíz Aguascalientes 2026 on INIFAP’s Pabellón research station, Irritec México showed a new digital platform that reads soil moisture by satellite roughly every 10 square meters and tells growers when to irrigate and for how long, whether they run drip, sprinklers or furrow irrigation. (Article in Spanish.)
Conheça novo aplicativo que pode auxiliar produtores na gestão de alimentos orgânicos
Embrapa is field-testing a phone app to replace the stacks of paper forms behind Brazil’s farmer-run organic certification groups, holding workshops with small growers in the South and Southeast to simplify icons and wording for people new to smartphones. The records it builds up could also help associations plan sales and joint input purchases. (Article in Portuguese.)
Paso Robles local builds app to help families manage youth livestock projects
David and Tiffany Trimble built AG Life, an app that helps junior exhibitors keep feeding, weights, training, show dates and DNA and withdrawal deadlines in one place for cattle, hogs, lambs, goats, poultry and rabbits, with photo feedback on the animal and on showmanship plus advice for parents on when to stay hands-off. It costs $5 a month after a two-week trial and is free for FFA advisers and 4-H leaders.
Maryland High Schoolers Design Agriculture Drone, Make NASA Competition History
Six Maryland high school students took third place in NASA’s “Dream with Us” design challenge with TG-1, a vertical-takeoff drone concept that carries an under-canopy depth camera and a small robotic arm to check soybean pods for stink bug damage. University of Maryland Extension specialists helped them rework the pest-detection model.
¿Quieren jubilar al pluviómetro? Una agtech encontró la manera de desarrollar un “meteorólogo” para cada lote y emitir pronósticos que distingan tranqueras
Developer Andrés Hernández built Vienor, a web and phone platform that blends six weather models into a forecast for the specific field a user outlines on a map, with custom alerts for frost, wind, heat, rain and spray windows and no on-farm weather station needed. Subscribers can also have AI draft weekly summaries, frost reviews and season reports from their alerts and field notes, after a 30-day free trial. (Article in Spanish.)
Una familia argentina creó una plataforma inédita en el mundo que busca revolucionar el negocio ganadero
Two brothers, a cousin and a brother-in-law in Argentina built Bulltrack, an app launched in February that turns cattle genomic test results into simple rankings so ranchers can compare animals and pick breeding stock that fits their goals. It also offers a semen catalog, has expanded to Uruguay, and the founders hope to reach the United States. (Article in Spanish.)
US spray drone market “very much in flux” as firms attempt to navigate evolving landscape, says ASDC
The American Spray Drone Coalition says U.S. sales of new ag spray drones fell from 8,950 in 2024 to 3,711 in 2025 as customs holds on DJI shipments and FCC limits on new foreign models choked supply, even though acres treated by drone rose about 59% to 16.4 million. The group wants the FCC to exempt Part 137 spray drones from a proposed crackdown on foreign 'military-grade' drones and give U.S. makers a multi-year runway, since domestic parts still cost far more.
Henry Co. man’s BarnBuddy app aims to simplify animal care for farmers and pet owners
Glenn Mills, a retired software manager and former FFA member who grew up in Henry County, Kentucky, built BarnBuddy, a phone app for logging animal photos, documents, breeding, births, weights and withdrawal dates, with a farm calendar and an FFA project mode. Owners can share records with their veterinarian through a code; it costs a one-time $19.99 ($49 for vets), and the iPhone version was still in Apple's review when the story ran.
Justiça amplia proibição de agrotóxicos aplicados por drones
A state appeals court in Acre, Brazil, widened a ban on drone spraying of pesticides, herbicides and desiccants to cover an entire farm near Rio Branco, after prosecutors cited technical reports that drone-applied herbicide had drifted onto about 49 hectares of legally protected conservation land. The ruling also gives state and city officials 10 days to inspect the water sources used by nearby families. (Article in Portuguese.)
AI and autonomous ag machines share a tie
In a Council for Agricultural Science and Technology webinar, Mississippi State's Alex Thomasson said AI that can pick out individual plants is what makes targeted spraying and autonomous field machines possible, and could let livestock be watched around the clock. He cautioned that farm AI still needs dependable data, rural broadband, equipment that shares data, cybersecurity, independent field testing and a trained workforce.
Ovix-AI Pioneers Superintelligence in Agriculture With Midwest Farmer Pilot
Indiana startup Ovix-AI has begun testing its field-operations assistant with Midwest farmers, using a set of AI agents that combine weather, satellite, soil and crop-history data to flag disease, insect and water risks and draft field plans. Farmers review and approve every recommendation, and the pilot will check the software's advice against what actually happens in the field.
Insect Eavesdropper Helps Farmers Spot Pests Earlier
Kansas State University researchers are clipping small microphones onto soybean plants and using AI to pick out the sounds and vibrations of insects feeding inside the stems, starting with the hard-to-find soybean stem borer. The field tests, part of a multistate project led by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, check the recordings against plant inspections to see how reliably the system finds hidden pests.
Drones help inventory cattle at feedyard
Crop Quest's HeadCount division in Dodge City, Kansas, has feedyards fly preprogrammed DJI drone routes over pens to count cattle ready to ship, a job it says shrinks from six or seven hours of cowboys counting by hand to about 30 minutes. About 60 feedyards subscribe at roughly 15 cents a head, and lenders also hire the service for third-party inventory audits.
$5.9 million in Alberta agricultural research aims to improve crop and livestock management
Genome Alberta is backing seven projects worth $5.9 million that run AI and machine learning over years of existing genomic data, including work to identify canola clubroot strains, forecast flea beetle emergence, guide cattle breeding picks and speed research on drug-resistant livestock parasites. No date was given for farm-ready tools.
Global AI Model WeedNet Identifies 1,593 Weed Species With Record Accuracy
Iowa State and University of Arizona researchers built WeedNet, a large AI model that names 1,593 weed species correctly about 91% of the time; a version retrained on 84 Iowa weeds topped 97%. In the Nature Communications study they also ran it on drone and ground-rover photos and linked it to a chat-style advisor farmers could query.
Asiscultivos, la herramienta de AGROSAVIA que convierte los datos del campo en decisiones informadas para el manejo de plagas
Colombia's public farm research agency released Asiscultivos, a free Android app that works offline, guides greenhouse tomato growers through random scouting for the tomato leafminer, and weighs pest counts against control costs and prices before advising whether to treat. In Boyacá field trials, growers cut sprays for the pest by up to 70%. (Article in Spanish.)
Young farmer uses drone technology to boost efficiency
A 24-year-old fourth-generation grower in New Forest, in Jamaica's Manchester parish, flies a spray drone over his cabbage at night and says it has trimmed spraying costs by roughly 70% versus knapsacks and mist blowers. A seven-acre scallion job that once tied up three workers all day now takes him under two hours.
Vermeer Bale Hawk collects 257 bales in 24-hour test
Vermeer's driverless Bale Hawk gathered 257 round bales during a nonstop 24-hour run, lifting three at a time on tracks rather than a spear and hauling them to an operator-chosen drop row. The tracked machine has been tested for several years in Iowa and nearby states, but Vermeer still calls it a concept and is not selling it yet.
El Salvador lanza AgroConecta, una plataforma digital para asistir al sector agropecuario
El Salvador's agriculture ministry started AgroConecta, letting crop and livestock producers get remote help by WhatsApp or phone from agronomists working with an ag-trained AI tool, and schedule farm visits, while in-person training continues. The EU-funded program also involves FAO and the ITU. (Article in Spanish.)
Harvest Help app connects farmers with labor, trucking and ag services
Nebraska City farmers John and Tommie Lenhart built Harvest Help, a phone app where producers post jobs such as custom planting, harvest, trucking or dirt work and get matched with nearby people who have the skills and equipment. Users can message, agree on the work and invoice inside the app, which is offering a six-month free trial.
COOPAR amplía su capacidad de trabajo con un segundo dron aplicador
Argentine farm cooperative COOPAR added a second 80-liter XAG P150 Max spray drone so the pair can work fields together, covering about 100 hectares in roughly three and a half hours, after its service treated some 2,000 hectares in its first few months. The co-op also flies multispectral mapping drones to spot weeds and crop stress for targeted applications. (Article in Spanish.)
Vineyards turn to UV-C light to fight powdery mildew
Saga Robotics' battery-powered Thorvald robots work California vineyard rows at night, treating vines with low-dose ultraviolet light that kills powdery mildew before the fungus can repair itself, and covered about 2,600 acres this season. Silver Oak and Bonterra both tried them in a tough mildew year, and Bonterra said its robot-treated chardonnay did as well as or better than its oil-and-sulfur blocks.
Soft Robotic Gripper Harvests Blueberry Clusters With 92% Success in Field Trials
Researchers from Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia and the University of Florida built CLASP, a robot arm whose two spinning silicone bands tug whole clusters of fresh-market blueberries so ripe fruit comes off while green berries stay on the bush. It grabbed 23 of 25 clusters in field tests at a little over half a skilled picker's pace; the results come from a preprint that has not yet been peer reviewed.
Startup baiana usa inteligência artificial para criar “Tabela Fipe” de touros e vacas
Bahia livestock marketplace erural is preparing eruralTag, a subscription tool that uses AI and prices tracked at more than 800 cattle auctions to estimate what breeding bulls and cows are worth, a bit like a used-car price guide. The company aims to launch by the end of 2026 and sees banks and auctioneers using the values for lending and sales. (Article in Portuguese.)
Drones now delivering more options on the farm
Jeff Clack of Bestway Ag Drones, who will fly demos at the Sunbelt Ag Expo starting Oct. 20, says growers are pairing low-cost multispectral mapping drones with spray drones and leaning on them when wet fields keep ground rigs out. He sees battery life as the main limit, with makers moving to hybrid onboard power, and warns that licensing and registering drones over 55 pounds can take up to about 90 days.
Automação no abastecimento agrícola: Zait.ag lança ferramenta voltada à governança e redução de custos
Brazilian agtech Zait.ag launched Gas Station, a farm fuel-tank system that checks the operator, the machine and its hour meter before releasing diesel, then feeds every fill-up into its ZFarm management software and automated reports. The company estimates diesel can reach 15% of a farm's operating costs. (Article in Portuguese.)
New MI Digital Farm Platform will map Michigan field profitability zones
Michigan State University is building MI Digital Farm, a free tool that turns yield-monitor data into multi-year profit and loss maps down to quarter-acre zones, helping farmers weigh variable-rate inputs or retiring weak ground. Enrollment for Michigan growers is expected to open within about six months.
Desarrollan robot inteligente para monitoreo de cultivos en Hidalgo
A team at the Instituto Tecnológico Superior de Huichapan in Hidalgo, Mexico, is building a wheeled robot with cameras and AI to catch pests like whitefly and spider mites early, flag weeds and map trouble spots so growers can target their sprays. The project is backed by a 250,000-peso state science grant. (Article in Spanish.)
Drone Data Reveals the Critical Wheat Growth Window That Predicts Yield
Texas A&M AgriLife researchers analyzed four seasons of drone imagery from wheat breeding plots at Bushland, Texas, and found that flights around heading held most of the signal for predicting yield. Their best machine learning models explained about 95% of yield variation, which could let breeders fly fewer, better-timed missions.
Una idea que Suma: hermanos ganaderos crean una aplicación con IA que pone la finca en su bolsillo
Siblings Lorena and Juan Diego Vargas turned the record-keeping they built for their family's Holstein dairy in Cundinamarca, Colombia, into Suma, an AI-assisted phone app covering milk, breeding, herd health, rations and finances, with alerts. About 200 farms registered within roughly two months of opening it up. (Article in Spanish.)
Space AG, la startup peruana de agrotecnología, levanta más de US$1,19 millones y se prepara para expandirse a Chile y México
Peruvian startup Space AG, which pairs drone and satellite imagery with analysis software for fruit exporters, raised US$1.19 million in seed money led by The Yield Lab. It reports drone flights over more than 100,000 hectares and plans to push into Chile and Mexico with grapes, avocados, blueberries and cherries. (Article in Spanish.)
Wingsure Launches AI-Powered Coffee Farm Intelligence Platform
Wingsure, a U.S. agtech firm that grew out of SRI, rolled out Coffea, which combines phone-based field data, AI and satellite imagery into a living digital record for each coffee farm that buyers, lenders and insurers can draw on. The company has not shared pricing, availability or how many farms are enrolled.
Smart Eyes: A primeira máquina brasileira de seleção autônoma de mudas chega ao mercado
Brazilian nursery-automation firm Smart Machines has started selling Smart Eyes, a camera-and-AI machine that grades about one seedling per second on size, leaf count, stem width and whether the plant is alive, with no worker in the loop. Its first large user is the tree nursery of a major pulp producer. (Article in Portuguese.)
Aviones, drones y pulverizadoras: qué reveló una prueba a campo sobre calidad y deriva
At an aerial-application congress in Marcos Juárez, Córdoba, Argentina, technicians compared an ag plane, DJI and XAG spray drones and two ground sprayers for coverage, droplet quality and drift in real field conditions. Organizers said equipment setup and operator training mattered as much as which machine was used. (Article in Spanish.)
Syngenta Launches Cropwise Explorer to Help Retailers Deliver Data-Driven Recommendations
Syngenta's new Cropwise Explorer lets farm-input retailers keep tabs on many growers' fields at once, pairing satellite crop-vigor readings, past yield data and anomaly alerts with an AI-written summary that points to which fields to scout first. Retailers can log scouting notes and photos and pass recommendations straight to their growers.
Using Drones as a Bird Deterrent
A UC Cooperative Extension farm advisor flew a small DJI drone at birds raiding blueberry fields near Delano and Kingsburg, California, and used field audio recorders to learn which species show up and when, with activity peaking around 7 to 8 a.m. Birds moved in 85% of encounters but left the field only about 30% of the time, so 2027 trials will test which flight tactics keep them away and whether it pays.
Student invention combines AI and robotics to rapidly analyze crop seeds
University of Alberta students built a robotic arm with a high-resolution camera that scans whole trays of seed and uses AI to report on each kernel, a quality check inspectors now do one seed at a time under a microscope. The work, requested by Alberta's 20/20 Seed Labs, has been spun out as Rosette Robotics.
Aigen trains solar-powered farming robots for new crops in under a week
U.S. company Aigen says its Alchemy simulator builds fully labeled virtual fields, letting its solar-powered Element weeding robots learn a new crop such as lettuce and be working real rows within about a week. It reports more than 100 robots built and over 15,000 autonomous hours logged in California, Minnesota and North Dakota.
Dillon ranchers implement virtual fencing technology to track cattle
After summer wildfires scattered their herd across remote grazing ground near Dillon, Montana, the Holland family is fitting 1,750 cows with satellite-linked virtual fence collars so they can locate and move cattle from a phone app where there is no cell service. USDA NRCS grants are helping cover the cost.
Device lets ranchers check water supply from their phones
Ranchbot, an Australian-born water monitoring company now based in Fort Worth, lets ranchers watch wells, tanks, pumps and troughs from a phone app instead of driving to each one. The company is also working with Texas Tech's ranch management program as drought keeps water top of mind.
AGCO Tech Day 2026 Spotlights Autonomy, AI and Mixed-Fleet Solutions to Enhance Farmer Profitability
At a working farm near Yorkville, Illinois, AGCO is showing its OutRun retrofit autonomy running tillage and driverless grain carts beside a Fendt combine during harvest. The demos also cover camera-guided weed spraying on the Rogator and a voice-or-text farm data assistant called Aurora.
UPN y Coopagro del Clúster Café de Cajamarca son las primeras institucionesde Trujillo y Cajamarca en transferir y adoptar una tecnología para el mercado del café
A Peruvian university licensed CoffeeX, a computer-vision device that grades green coffee beans, to the Coopagro cooperative in Jaén for use at its buying stations. Developers say it cuts grading time by about three-quarters at roughly 95% accuracy, and they hope to offer it to other Cajamarca co-ops. (Article in Spanish.)
Smart Ear Tags Help Cattle Producers Detect Heat, Calving and Health Problems
An Iowa cow-calf couple explains how sensor ear tags and their phone alerts help them catch heat, calving and sick cows with a two-person crew. The piece also compares three U.S. systems, Merck's SenseHub Cow Calf, 701x and Ceres Tag, on equipment needs, coverage and per-head cost.
“Ponemos la inteligencia artificial”: una empresa argentina cerró una alianza con un gigante brasileño de la maquinaria agrícola
Santa Fe startup DeepAgro signed a deal for Brazilian maker Jacto to build its SprAI camera-based weed detection into selective sprayers at the factory, starting in Brazil. The system decides on the machine itself where to spray, with no internet link needed; a cotton trial with Amaggi reportedly saved about 26,000 liters of herbicide. (Article in Spanish.)
Aprosoja/MS lança painel de risco para safra 2026/27
Mato Grosso do Sul's soybean growers group opened a free online dashboard that tracks eight risk factors for the 2026-27 season, from credit and weather to prices, margins and freight. It will be updated through the season to help producers plan alongside their own analysis. (Article in Portuguese.)
NDSU Studies Drone Spraying for Wheat Scab
In a Carrington, North Dakota trial on hard red spring wheat, a Hylio spray drone applying fungicide at 5 gallons per acre controlled Fusarium head blight about as well as a ground rig at 15 gallons. Researchers say drones could help when wet fields keep sprayers out during the short flowering window; results are preliminary.
Extension Notebook: AI in agriculture
University of Illinois Extension's Dennis Bowman breaks farm AI into predictive, machine-built-in, generative, and agentic types, with examples from horseradish weed recognition to drone spray maps for farmstead trees. He urges growers to verify AI advice, recalling an out-of-state nitrogen model that cost Illinois corn 33 bushels an acre.
Embrapa lança IA que ajuda pecuarista a escolher reprodutores para o rebanho
Embrapa Pecuária Sul and the Brazilian Brangus Association released Brangus+IA, a free chat tool where breeders ask plain questions and get bulls ranked on genetic values such as weaning weight or tick resistance. Ranchers can weight the traits that matter most for their own herds. (Article in Portuguese.)
Lightweight AI Spots Grapevine Virus From Drone Hyperspectral Images
Researchers flew a hyperspectral camera over four Napa Valley vineyards and trained a compact AI model against 714 lab-tested vines. It caught roughly 87% of vines carrying red blotch virus, pointing to faster whole-block checks than row walking or lab sampling.
Bonsai Robotics uses AI simulation to train field robots before deployment
U.S. company Bonsai Robotics added a 3D simulation layer, Bonsai World, to the autonomy software behind its Amiga platform and retrofit kits, so machines can rehearse a new orchard, crop or task virtually before arriving. The company has not yet published independent data on how much field setup time it saves.
Sin tractores, sin pisar los cultivos y desde el aire: los drones que cambian el campo patagónico
Two custom applicators in Argentina's Viedma Valley run a pair of DJI spray drones for herbicide, fertilizer and seeding work, using about 10 liters of water per hectare and getting into fields after rain. They say wind is the main limit and that convincing growers used to soaked leaves took spray cards. (Article in Spanish.)
Como a inteligência artificial pode ajudar no manejo de abelhas
Rio Grande do Sul beekeeper Guilherme Sjlender built MeliBee, an apiary app that turns a spoken hive-inspection note into records and suggested chores. It works offline and syncs later, covering honey lot tracing, queen records, and native stingless bee colonies. (Article in Portuguese.)
iaVid, un sistema que estima la producción de uvas en el viñedo y el conjunto de beneficios que permite
Uruguayan researchers from the Universidad de la República put cameras on a tractor and used AI to forecast Tannat grape yields, coming within about 10% of the real harvest in two commercial vineyards in Canelones. A new three-year phase will move to daytime imaging and more grape varieties. (Article in Spanish.)
Robots Keep Fields Weed-Free
Back on the family farm in south-central Kansas, Clint Brauer's Greenfield machines cut weeds between 30-inch rows day or night on solar power. The third-generation fleet is on paid acres in Nebraska, northern Oklahoma, and Kansas, and a Rock River tissue sensor is slated to go on the robots.
AI Takes a Bigger Role in Farm Equipment as Technology Becomes More Practical
AEM's Austin Gellings told Market Day Report that equipment makers now group onboard AI as Assist, Advise, and Act, including camera sprayers that open only the nozzles over weeds. He cited chemical cuts from about 65% to more than 90% and said trust, not just capability, will decide how fast autonomy spreads.
Drones avançam nas fazendas, mas mão de obra ainda é entrave
Brazil lists just over 13,000 registered farm drones, yet one industry estimate puts the real fleet above 60,000 and possibly 115,000 by 2030. A Sindag survey found 85% of ag aviation firms lack qualified drone pilots, so farms are recruiting operators from other fields. (Article in Portuguese.)
Aligning 'Smart Implements' with Autonomous Tractors
Carbon Robotics' Brett Goodwin explains Carbon Autonomy Ready, which lets implement makers feed depth, pressure, and leveling data into the company's tractor kits. Great Plains is the first partner, and the program is open to other equipment brands.
Which Spray Drones Can US Farmers Still Buy? Check the FCC Date, Not the Flag
An October buyer guide walks through which foreign spray drones still have pre-December 2025 FCC grants, including common Agras and XAG models. It also flags the October 13 component rule and pending proposals that could tighten U.S. imports further.
With Diesel Up 70%, Aigen's Solar Robots Manage Crops With No Fuel or Herbicides
Aigen says its Alchemy simulation tools trained Element fleets on a new row crop in under a week, then sent solar-powered robots to weed without diesel or herbicides. The Redmond firm is taking 2027 orders and plans a FIRA USA demo in Yakima later this month.
Conheça o caminhão semiautônomo que vai rodar sozinho no meio da safra
Adecoagro will use Agronomous, a semi-autonomous 8x4 sugarcane haul truck built by Brazil's BMB Mode Center, during the 2026-27 harvest. It follows a georeferenced path beside the harvester so its tires stay off the cane stubble that regrows next season. (Article in Portuguese.)
Are You Ready for the Changes that Could Come with a Move to Autonomy?
On a Moving Iron Summit panel in Louisville, Kentucky no-tiller Quint Pottinger explained swapping two big tractors and 16-row planters for one 135-hp tractor and an 8-row planter run by a Sabanto retrofit kit. He now plants every acre driverless, one of fewer than 50 U.S. farms doing so, per the state ag department.
AtTheYards Delivers Real-Time Data to the Auction Ring
AtTheYards, started by Nebraska feedlot family member Jacob Sebade, lets sale barns post consignment details, photos, and videos ahead of an auction. Buyers set preference lists to get alerts, and Bluegrass Stockyards says the app is putting consignors' cattle in front of more bidders.
NDSU's Row-Crop Robot Hits 96.5% Weeding Accuracy in Sugar Beet Trials
North Dakota State University engineers field-tested a three-row mechanical weeder on an Amiga base that lifts each sweep independently with RTK-GPS and force sensors. Trials reached 96.5% weeding efficacy and nearly half the soil disturbance of coarser cultivation, though speed stays about 0.5 m/s for now.
AI Robot Spots Soybean Diseases Early
Southern Illinois University researchers built a battery-powered field robot with GPS and multi-angle cameras after drone scouting could not see frogeye lesions under leaves. They are training AI models and disease maps so growers can treat hotspots instead of whole soybean acres.
New AI-powered system could help dairy producers improve herd management
Herd-i's U.S. CEO says in-parlor cameras score every cow's body condition after milking and push objective daily readings to a dashboard. The New Zealand-born system already watches more than 145,000 cows a day and is recruiting 25 Founding Farmers for its American launch.
Gaia bot bridges gap between researchers and Florida growers
UF/IFAS researcher Nikolaos Tziolas built Gaia Bot so Florida growers can ask plain-language questions against satellite maps and academic datasets, including post-storm crop damage. A USDA grant is expanding the tool, and the university is also building a larger agricultural AI hub.
Drone Sprayer Learns to Hit Weeds Without Hitting the Crop
University of Arkansas researchers put a camera and small onboard computer on a spray drone that gauges green cover in soybeans and turns the pump on only when it exceeds a weed-free baseline, with no trained weed model. Indoor tests picked the right pump state 97% of the time, but shadows and motion blur still tripped it up in field flights.
Smartphone Technology Creates Vine-by-Vine Vineyard Maps
VineIQ lets California growers walk a block with a phone to map each vine, row, and planted acreage without an RTK rover, drone, or cell signal. Growers can flag dead or symptomatic vines and keep plant-level notes for replanting and disease watch.
Ecorobotix reports 84% spray-volume reduction in grass seed trial
During a 2025 trial at Oregon State's Hyslop Research Farm, the ARA targeted annual bluegrass and Italian ryegrass in tall fescue grown for seed. Ecorobotix says it treated 88% of the weeds it found, using 3.63 gallons per acre, which it calls an 84% cut from broadcast spraying.
September 2026 (39)
Nofence launches N3 cattle collar and livestock management platform
Nofence's N3 collar, which the company calls five times tougher than the previous model and covers with a 10-year warranty, anchors an app for virtual fences, heat-cycle scores, and calving alerts. Herds stay connected by cellular service, a collar-to-collar link called HerdNet, and satellite.
FBN and Google team up to give farm AI the context it’s been missing
FBN cofounder Charles Baron says today's models can draft an agronomic plan but do not connect it to buying inputs or selling grain. A deal with Google's AI Futures Fund gives FBN early access to newer models, with the first Norm features in testers' hands now and a wider release expected this fall.
FBN and Google Build AI "Context Engine" for Farms
FBN and Google's AI Futures Fund are building a Context Engine so the advisor Norm can tie soils, crops, equipment, and finances to local weather and markets. Daily farm-specific insights are slated for this fall, with purchases and payments targeted for spring.
New wave of ag drones ready for fields
A 2026 equipment roundup spans compact 8-gallon sprayers up to the 40-gallon Revolution R40, plus the autonomous Airstrike Ag P150 Max and the Independence 19. It also covers automated refill stations, trailer docks, generators, and TerraClear's TerraScout scouting boom.
New $129,000 ag drone can cover 135 acres per hour
Cambridge firm Forward Robotics flew its winged U9HL at Canada's Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock, where tilting rotors hand lift to a 33-foot wing. The company prices it at $129,000 and says it can cover 135 acres an hour, with one operator able to run up to four.
Aigen Launches Scalable Precision Mechanical Alternative to Chemical Weed Control
Element Gen 2 X4 runs on solar power and uses four arms to pull weeds up to 6 inches across, both in the row and between rows, while recording plant data. Aigen says Fortune 500 growers already have units, and two- and three-arm versions are still offered.
Napa Viticulturist Launches VineIQ, Which Maps a Vineyard Vine by Vine from One Lap on a Phone
Napa founder Emily Kuhn's VineIQ builds a vine-by-vine map and acreage count from one phone lap around a block, without an RTK rover or a drone. Growers can mark a vine dead or replanted and attach spray, irrigation, and growth-stage notes to that spot.
Greenfield Robotics opens public share offering after 6 years in the field
Greenfield is selling $2.07 shares on StartEngine in a Regulation A+ raise capped at $18.6 million. The Kansas firm says 82 weeding robots are on paying farms in 16 states and that its 2026 season sold out.
Amii and Croptimistic: Advancing Early-Season Precision Agriculture
Alberta's Amii worked with Saskatchewan's Croptimistic on vision models that separate crowded early wheat and oat plants when leaves overlap. The case study says the narrow-leaf models are meant to handle wind, dust, and glare so growers can judge stands and inputs sooner in the season.
Monil Deepens Commitment to U.S. Producers With 10-Year Warranty and New Grazing Management Features
Monil doubled its U.S. cattle-collar warranty to 10 years and says it already serves producers in 40 states after a July debut. Software updates this fall add calving alerts, with 2027 grazing reports, satellite backup, and collar-to-collar links planned at no extra charge.
Agrivanna Brings Voice-Powered Records to the Ranch
Calgary startup Agrivanna, led by Amirhossein Foroughi, Aminreza Abbasi, and Haden Harrison, turns spoken notes about animals, treatments, and herd moves into records ranchers review before saving. It is built to work offline and sync later, alongside pasture maps while the team researches virtual fencing.
Decide Who Sees What: New Roles, Permissions, and Mobile Tools in Traction - September 2026 Software Update
Traction's September update lets farms assign roles so a mobile operator can log field work and see spend without opening the full books. The phone app also lists the five nearest fields by GPS, preselects the field you are standing in, and can email records as a PDF or CSV.
John Deere Brings AI, Automation and Operator Comfort to the Farm Progress Show
In Boone, John Deere showed JD, an Operations Center assistant that answers from a farm's own machine and field records. Growers can ask by voice, phone, or browser, and the booth also covered 2027 combine automation and hands-free baling.
The company behind the drone matters
Farm Progress sits down with Agri Spray Drones founder Taylor Moreland. The published intro argues that service, time spent operating in the field, and control over how the product is built matter as much as the aircraft itself.
Autonomous tractors stay stalled in CA agriculture
California's Cal/OSHA rule Title 8 section 3441(b), written in 1977, still requires a person at the controls of moving self-powered farm equipment. Federal OSHA has no matching rule, so fully driverless tractors remain barred around workers.
Farmers use AI to revolutionize ag logistics
Rancher Carrie Richards and her brother built HarvestPath to follow meat-processing costs that swing with fuel and fees, and they are adding generative AI to reprice products as those costs move. Agco forecaster Adrian Crawford, who farms in Minnesota, says similar tools are already on machines her family runs.
SIU Researchers Build Robot, AI to Detect Soybean Diseases Before Symptoms Appear
Samuel Singh's multi-camera robot, built with professor Billy Ram at SIU Carbondale, drives soybean rows to photograph frogeye leaf spot on both faces of the leaf. The pair turned to the ground robot after a drone pass could not see lesions lower in the canopy, and the detection models are still being trained.
Farmers are facing more pressure; CNH says robotics can help
CNH manager Luca Ferrari says customers want help with labor during planting and spraying, not technology for its own sake. The company's New Holland R4 is aimed at vineyard and orchard work such as mowing, tillage, and spraying.
University of Maryland Extension updating research with drones
Maryland Extension agent Andy Kness reports multi-year Soy Checkoff trials on drone fungicide coverage and cover-crop seeding into standing corn. Raising carrier volume to about 2–3 gallons per acre hit target droplet density, and the state now accepts drone seeding in cover-crop programs.
New US Tariffs on Chinese Drones Raise Costs for Spray-Drone Farmers
Section 232 duties that took effect September 3 put 100% tariffs on heavier or thermal-equipped imported drones and 25% on many smaller units, hitting DJI Agras-class sprayers common on U.S. farms. USDA figures cited in the piece show adoption still skewed to larger operations, so replacement-cost pain lands unevenly.
Flying cameras help farmers spot pivot problems from home
Near Hartington, Nebraska, Skyles Kinkaid checks a diesel center pivot's fuel and breakdowns with a camera drone he prices around $5,500, from as far as 5 miles away. The piece notes that some growers still question whether the tools are ready for everyday use.
Mizzou's FieldVision Helps Drones Make Better Decisions Faster
University of Missouri engineers built FieldVision so each ag drone can choose whether to analyze images onboard, at a nearby edge server, or in the cloud as bandwidth shifts. Simulations beat rule-based and single-drone methods on reward, missed deadlines, and reliability without drones talking to each other mid-mission.
Introducing DeLaval Plus: A New Era of Dairy Farm Intelligence
DeLaval is opening DeLaval Plus to U.S. dairies, a portal for herd health, breeding, and milking plus equipment alerts and AI flags for issues such as mastitis or ketosis. Dealers get a combined view of connected herds, and the company says the tools run on its DeepBlue engine.
Carbon Robotics Opens Autonomous Tractor Platform to Implement Makers
Seattle-based Carbon Robotics opened Carbon Autonomy Ready so implement makers can wire tools into its driverless tractor kits without custom engineering for each brand. Great Plains is first, showing an HT1100 Terra-Max at Farm Progress that adjusts depth and pressure from implement sensors as it rolls.
Meet Hylio: The ag drone manufacturer grew its fleet 50% in 6 months
FAA registry tallies show U.S. Hylio aircraft over 55 pounds rising from 798 to 1,179 in six months, led by the ARES HYL-150 and Atlas HYL-300. The Texas maker says most components come from the U.S. or allies as foreign spray-drone rules tighten.
LivestockCity Announces Launching of Mobile Apps on Their Farming Platform
Virginia-based LivestockCity released free iOS and Android apps for U.S. and Canadian producers with profiles, a livestock activity feed, messaging, species discussion groups, and event calendars. The apps sync with the web platform; marketplace and herd records stay on the web for now.
The Not-So-Fun Legal Side of Owning a Spray Drone
AgWeb walks through Part 107, heavy-aircraft exemptions, Part 137 dispensing certificates, and state aerial licenses growers need before a spray drone flies. Hylio's CEO warns that illegal flights invite tighter FAA rules, after the agency proposed a large fine against an uncertified fertilizer operator.
Farmers Adopt AI While Still Trusting Agronomists Most
McKinsey's Global Farmer Insights 2026 found 17% of farmers worldwide use generative AI on the farm, including 11% of U.S. growers who pay for it. Only 6% called it a trusted input for decisions, compared with 56% for technical agronomists.
Great news for Android users in North America
Agworld opened its Android app to U.S. and Canadian clients with offline maps, agronomist notes, yield and margin views, job lists, and rainfall or harvest entry. Data syncs to the same cloud account used on iOS, so mixed-device teams share one farm record.
AI Moves from Farm Data to Machine Decisions
Equipment makers' group AEM says farm AI is shifting from after-season reports to live choices on steering, machine settings, spraying, and maintenance. It says many of those features run on the machine itself when broadband is poor, and it does not publish independent return figures.
As Ag Drone Use Grows, Companies Look to Avoid New 100% Import Tariffs
An August proclamation set tariffs as high as 100% on some imported drones, including 25% on machines over 55 pounds, and startup ag-drone makers are shifting more production to the U.S. Motors, batteries, and other key parts are still difficult to buy from domestic suppliers.
Farmer Perceptions of AI Benefits in the United States and Argentina
In mid-2026 surveys of about 400 producers in each country, 52% of U.S. growers chose no meaningful benefit as their one answer on AI and data tools. Argentine respondents could pick several answers and most often cited higher production and lower risk.
Put Your Herd on Your Phone: Kiko Nation Makes Livestock Management Simple
North Carolina's Kiko Nation pushed a national livestock app after beta, letting producers add animals from a phone and share a Digital Livestock Passport with buyers. A 14-day trial precedes $59 a year for up to 100 animals on Apple and Google stores.
Farm to Family Market looks to connect customers with local farms
Veteran Callie Cummings launched Farm to Family Market this year in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia so farms can list products, events, and visits and sell straight to families. Founding farms in those states get two years of membership at no charge.
From assistance to autonomy: How AI is changing agricultural equipment
An Association of Equipment Manufacturers paper, discussed by Austin Gellings, says AI built into machinery is already helping farms handle weather swings, input costs, and tight labor. It describes three levels of that integration and the guardrails needed before the tools are used more widely.
John Deere introduces AI assistant
JD, in a limited U.S. trial inside Operations Center, answers questions on fuel use, machine performance, and yield from the history already stored there. Deere says the records stay in the customer's account, with a broader web and phone release planned later this year and cab displays after that.
How a Raleigh tech company is using AI to farm produce indoors
Raleigh company AGEYE, started by Nick Gentry eight years ago, stacks greens, herbs, and fruit indoors and uses AI to map temperature and disease risk across each rack. Robotics handle the crop from seeding through packing, with harvests in about 21 to 24 days; restaurants including a Dubai Ritz-Carlton buy the produce, but grocery stores do not yet.
Farmer POV: Why invest in a drone
Ute, Iowa, farmer Robbie Gustin bought two T100 spray drones at about $45,000 each to apply fungicide and insecticide on corn and soybeans and to seed oats and rye into a standing crop. He expects them paid off within two years and wanted the work on his schedule instead of a helicopter's.
Future Farming Five: why Burro built a robot that never collects dust in your shed
Burro tells Future Farming that a robot built for a single chore spends too much of the year parked, so its machine is meant to haul, mow, spray, and scout. Nurseries, berries, vineyards, and orchards have been the strongest fits, and the company just completed its largest shipment to South America.
August 2026 (5)
Meet Bonsai Robotics’ farm robot Amiga
Bonsai Robotics has opened reservations for the Amiga Max, a seatless electric four-wheel-drive that won a Top 10 New Product award at the 2026 World Ag Expo. It is rated to carry 2,000 pounds, tow 5,000, and run up to eight hours on a swappable battery, guiding by cameras where tree cover knocks out GPS.
American-made ag drones are catching up — fast
HyFix chief Mike Horton says chips designed for drones, rather than phones, are what will let U.S. machines spot-spray and monitor whole farms and narrow the gap with cheaper Chinese aircraft. He expects tariffs and a push for domestic drones to speed that work, while acknowledging the capability gap is still real.
Pest-detecting drones are newest tool for Arkansas farmers
A July 21 demonstration by Taranis manager Jeff Dickens sent a high-definition camera drone over 97 acres of corn in Craighead County to look for insects, weeds, and crop condition. The flight was shown to growers in northeast Arkansas as a scouting tool.
New FCC proposal could ‘retroactively ban’ some existing ag spray drones, warns DJI
DJI warns that a July 21 FCC proposal could halt future U.S. sales of foreign spray drones already cleared for the market, including machines over 55 pounds and those that apply pesticides, while owners could keep flying what they have. Comments ran through Sept. 2, and the company says replacement parts could become hard to obtain.
What can a robot do in your cornfield?
Ag Progress Days is teaming with the European robotics show FIRA on a village of autonomous machines, including a weeder headed into corn and another demo in pumpkins. Manager Jesse Darlington says the event still brings field demonstrations and about 450 exhibitors despite a soft equipment market.
July 2026 (4)
Military or Farm Tool? FCC’s Proposed Drone Categories Blur the Line
The FCC's July 21 notice asks whether more foreign drones labeled military-grade should be blocked from import and sale, including aerosol aircraft that dispense pesticides. Manufacturer XAG is named in the proceeding, even as the agency has conditionally cleared some other ag-drone suppliers such as Vermont's Ceres Air.
Farmers' interest in pesticide-spraying drones surges after regulation change
After Health Canada lifted its limit at the end of June so drones can apply pesticides already approved for aerial use, Titan Aero Drones salesman Ryan Crumly says farmer interest jumped. Growers point to flooded fields that bog down ground sprayers, and several say they expect to buy within the next few years.
House Bill Aims to Expand AI on Farms as 75% of Farmers Don’t Use It
Reps. Don Davis and Zach Nunn filed the FARM AI Act to expand USDA research, training, and tools for on-farm AI, matching a Senate bill from Ted Budd and Adam Schiff. Bushel's 2026 survey of more than 1,400 U.S. and Canadian farmers found 14% use AI and about three-quarters do not.
Spray drone technology gains ground at Ag in Motion
At Ag in Motion in Langham, Manitoba's Green Aero Tech highlighted spray drones after Health Canada's June 30 policy allowed drones to apply pesticides already cleared for conventional aerial use. Co-founder Warren Genik puts a unit near $48,000 and says it can treat ground too wet for a sprayer, though pilots still need Transport Canada training.