Agentic age is transforming agriculture industry

The agentic age is set to transform the agriculture industry, ushering in an era of co-creation with intelligent systems.

As agriculture enters the agentic age, the industry is undergoing a profound transformation driven by predictive intelligence, autonomous decision-making, and smart discovery. Nations worldwide are racing to harness these technologies, with superpowers such as the US and China, alongside emerging hubs like Singapore and Dubai, leading the charge.

The convergence of public, private, and philanthropic capital is accelerating breakthroughs that are rapidly moving from theory to practice. With global investment surging, North America is strategically positioning itself to compete and capitalize on this new era of agricultural innovation. So, where are we on the AI hype curve as impacts emerge across digital advisory services, robotics, and biotechnology?

Advisory services: Elevating autonomous decision-making

In the US, agricultural advisory services can be insufficient. The broad diversity of farms (small, large, specialty, commodity) can present a challenge for advisory services seeking to tailor messages and methods.¹ With a vast range of requirements needed to meet the demands of the industry, there are doubts as to whether traditional advisory services can respond sufficiently.

AI agents can be a powerful tool for farmers, working alongside advisory services and agronomists. AI agents – accessible through platforms like WhatsApp – leverage Generative AI (GenAI) to provide scalable, personalized, and real-time advice. In fact, GenAI directly addresses challenges of digital literacy, language limitations, and relevance of information by offering farmers voice-based interfaces in the languages they use every day.

Silicon Valley-based Digital Green is a technology non-profit that works to support small-scale farmers globally.² In 2023, Digital Green launched an AI-powered assistant, FarmerChat, which delivers free, real-time, and locally relevant advice in farmers’ own languages through text, video, and voice.

Reaching over 565,000 users across Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, India, and Brazil who have currently asked over 5 million queries. FarmerChat makes critical agricultural information accessible, while also providing contextualized, accurate responses.

FarmerChat is just one example of how AI agents can provide targeted support for farmers. In the US, platforms like Farmers Business Network (FBN) are deploying similar tools at scale. FBN’s GenAI advisor, Norm, gives growers instant access to agronomic and operational intelligence, showing how AI can complement traditional advisory services and extend expert support to farms of all sizes.

The full potential of tools like AI agents remain largely untapped. While current applications are making significant improvements, further development and implementation could provide substantial value to the industry.

Robotics and automation: Addressing labor challenges

Traditionally, ag production has heavily relied on manual labor but, in the agentic age, implementation of AI is driving a profound shift. As AI systems mature, they are trained on vast amounts of real-world data, creating a more holistic understanding of the farm ecosystem, and unlocking new possibilities for deploying computer vision and intelligent decision‑making directly on hardware in the field.

AI-enabled robotics now span the full spectrum of farming operations. At the large‑scale end, autonomous tractors, sprayers, and drones use AI-guided navigation and perception to perform tasks like precision spraying, variable‑rate planting, and continuous crop monitoring. For specialty crops, where labor shortages are even more acute, smaller-scale robots are emerging to handle tasks that once required human hands such as precision weeding and delicate harvesting. These systems are redefining how the ag industry grows and processes food. What was once a labor-intensive and fragmented is now becoming automated, integrated, and connected.

Beyond automation, the precision achieved with robotics creates consistency, uniformity, and predictability in farming. The benefit of this is the ability to optimize plant growth, reduce waste, and deliver a consistent product, all while lowering costs. Robotics can handle repetitive, physically demanding jobs, offering consistent accuracy beyond human scope.

Biotechnology: Discovery in ag inputs and genetics

As new AI-first R&D pipelines take shape, predictive platforms are enabling the discovery of new microbes, proteins, molecules, and genetic traits. By analyzing large biological datasets, AI can pinpoint candidates for biological inputs, breeding programs, or gene-editing. This can significantly accelerate the journey from concept to market compared to traditional methods, promising to compress what once took years into months.

In genetics, AI models simulate the outcomes of specific traits, from their interaction with environmental conditions such as climate, soil chemistry, and pathogen pressure, to their impact on key product characteristics from yield and flavor to nutritional profile. These simulations help researchers identify which traits will deliver the greatest value for breeding or gene‑editing, whether that’s drought tolerance, nitrogen‑use efficiency, disease resistance, or improved nutritional qualities.

By accelerating the development of crops that are better matched to their environments and market needs, AI‑enabled genetics strengthen resilience and ultimately make farming more productive and profitable.

In biologics, AI accelerates the discovery and optimization of living inputs such as microbes, enzymes, and natural compounds that support plant growth, nutrition, and protection. These models analyze microbiome, soil, and metabolomic data to identify organisms or molecules that enhance nutrient uptake, suppress disease, or improve stress tolerance across different geographies and cropping systems – enabling more targeted, effective formulations.

The agentic age: What’s next?

Focusing on transformation in the face of AI, the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit is returning to San Fransico on March 17-18 as the global hub for innovation discovery, high-level networking, and deal-making. The summit brings together 2,000 leaders from across agriculture and food, including agribusinesses, technology giants, food brands, investors, startups, philanthropists, and government agencies.

Now in its 14^th year, the summit will explore how intelligent systems are reshaping how to grow, invest, and collaborate across the agri-food system – spotlighting deeptech breakthroughs, tangible use cases, and commercialization pathways driving resilience from soil to plate.

Senior decision-makers will assess how innovations in robotics, biotechnology, and precision agriculture are advancing from experimentation to commercial reality, unlocking new levels of profitability, efficiency, and resilience amid economic volatility.

The summit will answer a series of industry questions, including:

What does strategic leadership look like when decision-making, innovation, and foresight are increasingly co-created with intelligent systems? How will this redefine competitiveness and governance across the food system?
As technology rewrites the rules of innovation at unprecedented speed, how are R&D models moving beyond traditional boundaries? What will research and development look like in 3, 5 or 10 years?
Which AI applications are already delivering measurable impact and ROI, and which will remain longer-term bets? What practical insights are emerging from the early wave of experimentation?

The 2026 edition begins with a pre-summit AI in Agriculture Forum on March 16, followed by two days of visionary plenaries and case studies focused on R&D and discovery on March 17-18. The expanded Start-Up Arena returns, alongside new editorial deep dives exploring commercialisation strategies.

Register here for The World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit, San Francisco for two days of discussions and networking opportunities.

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