How Farmers Are Using AI
When you ask a farmer if they’re using AI, there’s a decent chance that they’ll think you’re talking about artificial insemination (at least among us livestock farmers). Some may never have heard of artificial intelligence, while others may be running their businesses with it. Whether we want it or not, AI is being woven into the fabric of American agriculture in some surprising ways. Here are a few examples:
Weed Identification & Precision Spraying
Instead of spraying an entire field with herbicide, AI-powered cameras can identify individual weeds as equipment passes through the field. The sprayer then applies herbicide only where it's needed, reducing chemical use by as much as 90% in some situations. That saves money, reduces environmental impact, and helps preserve herbicide effectiveness by avoiding unnecessary applications.
Livestock Health Monitoring
Some dairy and beef operations equip cattle with smart collars that continuously monitor activity, rumination, and even heat cycles. AI analyzes this information to alert farmers when a cow is ready to be bred or when changes in behavior might indicate illness before obvious symptoms appear. Catching problems early can improve animal welfare while reducing veterinary costs.
Drone Crop Scouting
Walking every acre of a field simply isn't practical on many farms. Drones equipped with high-resolution cameras can fly over crops and collect thousands of images in minutes. AI then analyzes those images to identify water stress, pest damage, nutrient deficiencies, and poor stand establishment. It can even help estimate yields long before harvest, giving farmers more time to plan labor, storage, and marketing.
Plant Disease Identification
Instead of spending hours searching through reference books or waiting for an extension specialist, farmers can photograph a plant leaf and upload the image to an AI-powered diagnostic tool. These programs can identify common diseases such as powdery mildew, blight, rust, or nutrient deficiencies in seconds, helping growers respond before problems spread.
Greenhouse Climate Control
Modern greenhouse systems increasingly rely on AI to continuously adjust temperature, humidity, ventilation, irrigation, and even carbon dioxide levels. Rather than running equipment on fixed schedules, these systems respond to changing conditions throughout the day, improving growing conditions while reducing unnecessary energy and water use.
Artificial intelligence is a very controversial subject right now. Farmers are not only debating how it should be used, but whether it should be used at all. There are questions about the enormous amounts of electricity and water consumed by data centers, the impact those facilities can have on nearby communities, and reports of agricultural land being purchased for technology infrastructure. Others worry about privacy, ownership of farm data, or becoming dependent on technology developed by a handful of large corporations.
Personally, we’ve gone back and forth about using AI. We agree that it is neither environmentally nor economically sustainable at this point in time, but we also see it for what it is: an incredibly powerful time saving tool. As small business owners, we know that our time is our single most valuable asset, so it’s hard to resist the lure of enhanced productivity. It’s also hard to ignore the reality that many of our competitors are already using it. Normally, we wouldn't adopt something simply because everyone else is doing it, but small farms like ours already compete in a marketplace dominated by multinational corporations with greater resources. If there are ways to level the playing field, we owe it to our business, and to our customers, to consider them.
We always talk about how much we value transparency, so we’re sharing the simple AI use policy that we developed for our business with you all. We approach artificial intelligence the exact same way as we approach antibiotic use in livestock: we are willing to use it sparingly and judiciously. Currently, our line is that using AI must save us a significant amount time in order to be justified. Endless hours spent researching a topic or grappling with computer tasks have an environmental cost, too, not just in electricity, but in lost opportunities to do the work that only we can do. We try to use AI as intelligently as possible: our prompts are concise, we minimize back and forth, and of course we never share confidential information about our customers, our suppliers, our business, or ourselves.
There is one line we are unwilling to cross: we will never use generative AI to create fake photos or videos of our farm. Every image that we share will continue to show the real people, real animals, and real work happening here. Authenticity has always mattered to us, and we don't see that changing anytime soon.
What are your thoughts on using artificial intelligence in agriculture? We’d love to hear your point of view, no matter where you fall on the spectrum of resistance or acceptance!
