Agricultural technology examples include GPS auto-steer tractors, yield monitors, crop-spraying drones, satellite crop maps, drip irrigation, hydroponic greenhouses, gene-edited crops and manure digesters that turn waste into energy. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s research agency NIFA describes agricultural technology as advances in “sensors, devices, machines, and information technology” used on farms, from robots and moisture sensors to aerial images and GPS.
Below we explain what agricultural technology is, go through 10 examples with current U.S. data, and look at what these tools mean for food, water and the climate.
What Is Agricultural Technology?
Agricultural technology, or agtech, is any tool that helps farmers grow more with less land, water, fuel, fertilizer or labor. Much of modern agricultural technology falls under precision agriculture: collecting data that is specific to a place or a time in the field and using it to apply seed, water, fertilizer and pesticide only where they are needed. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) notes that there is no single definition of precision agriculture, and reports, citing USDA, that 27% of U.S. farms and ranches used precision agriculture practices in 2023.
U.S. farms now produce far more without using much more inputs. According to the USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), U.S. farm output nearly tripled between 1948 and 2023, growing 1.52% a year, while total input use grew only 0.12% a year.
| Type of agtech | Examples | Main benefit |
|---|---|---|
| Precision field tools | GPS auto-steer, yield monitors, variable-rate application | Less overlap and waste of seed, fertilizer and fuel |
| Remote sensing and robots | Drones, satellites, autonomous tractors | Seeing crop problems early, saving labor |
| Water and growing systems | Drip irrigation, greenhouses, hydroponics | More food per gallon of water and per acre |
| Biology | Gene editing | Crops with useful traits, bred faster |
| Energy and climate | Manure digesters, agrivoltaics | Lower emissions, extra farm income |
10 Examples of Agricultural Technology
1. GPS Guidance and Auto-Steer
GPS guidance steers a tractor along exact lines across the field, so passes do not overlap or leave gaps. In 2023, auto-steer guidance was used by 52% of midsize farms and 70% of large-scale crop-producing farms (USDA ERS).
Adoption grew fast: auto-steer was used on only 5.3% of planted corn acres in 2001 and on 58% in 2016 (USDA ERS). Saving labor time, cutting input costs and reducing operator fatigue are among the reasons farmers give for adopting precision tools, according to ERS.
2. Yield Monitors and Variable-Rate Application
A yield monitor on a combine records how much grain each spot of the field produces. Over several seasons, these yield maps show which zones are consistently strong or weak. In 2023, yield monitors, yield maps and soil maps were used on 68% of large-scale crop farms (USDA ERS).
Variable-rate technology (VRT) uses those maps to change how much seed or fertilizer the machine applies as it moves. ERS found VRT on 37.4% of planted corn acres in 2016, up from 11.5% in 2005, and on 25.3% of soybean acres in 2018 (USDA ERS).
3. Agricultural Drones
Drones carry cameras that spot pests, disease and water stress, and larger models spray pesticides or spread seed on small or hard-to-reach fields. In the U.S., spraying from a drone counts as an agricultural aircraft operation: under a 2023 FAA notice, operators of spray drones under 55 pounds needed a Part 137 agricultural aircraft operator certificate and an exemption, and the pilot needed at least a remote pilot certificate. That notice was canceled in June 2024.
Drone spraying rules change. Before buying a spray drone, check the current Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requirements and your state’s pesticide applicator license rules.
4. Satellite Crop Monitoring
Satellites photograph every farm field in the country again and again. NASA’s Landsat 9, launched in September 2021, works with Landsat 8 to image the Earth every eight days at about 30-meter (98-foot) resolution, and NASA lists crop growth among the things it tracks.
USDA turns satellite images into the Cropland Data Layer, an annual map of which crop grows where across the lower 48 states. Since 2024 its resolution is 10 meters, using Landsat and the European Sentinel-2 satellites. NASS uses it to support its crop acreage estimates.
5. Autonomous Tractors
Self-driving tractors take GPS guidance one step further: no one sits in the cab. At CES 2022, John Deere unveiled a fully autonomous version of its 8R tractor paired with a tillage chisel plow. According to Deere, it uses six pairs of stereo cameras for 360-degree obstacle detection, and the farmer starts it and watches it from a smartphone app.
Barriers are similar to the ones GAO lists for precision agriculture in general: high up-front costs, a lack of reliable rural broadband, and farmers’ concerns about how farm data are shared and who owns them (GAO).
6. Drip Irrigation and Smart Watering
Irrigation takes a lot of water. In 2023, 212,714 U.S. farms irrigated 53.1 million acres and applied 81 million acre-feet of water, spending $3.3 billion on energy for pumping (USDA NASS).
Most of that land is watered by sprinklers (30.8 million acres in the open). Drip, trickle and low-flow micro systems, which deliver water straight to the roots, covered 6.4 million acres on 60,160 farms (USDA Census of Agriculture), or about 12% of irrigated acres by our own calculation. Soil-moisture sensors and weather-based controllers decide when to water, so fields get what crops need rather than a fixed schedule.
7. Greenhouses, Hydroponics and Vertical Farms
Controlled-environment agriculture grows food indoors under glass, plastic or LED lights, often in hydroponic systems where roots sit in nutrient-rich water instead of soil. Vertical farms stack these growing beds in layers, usually in cities. U.S. sales of food crops grown under protection reached about $1.0 billion in 2024, up 44% from 2019 (USDA NASS Census of Horticultural Specialties).
Indoor farms can grow lettuce, herbs and tomatoes year-round close to buyers. The trade-off is energy: lights, heating and cooling replace free sunlight, so the climate benefit can depend on the local electricity supply.
8. Gene Editing
Tools like CRISPR let breeders change a specific gene in a plant instead of crossing plants for many generations. In February 2019, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) completed its first consultation on a genome-edited plant variety, a high-oleic soybean.
Regulation is in flux. On December 2, 2024, a federal court vacated USDA’s May 2020 biotechnology rule, and USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) says it restarted its biotechnology processes in 2025 (USDA APHIS). Check current rules before relying on any regulatory status.
9. Manure Digesters
An anaerobic digester is a sealed tank where bacteria break down manure without oxygen and produce biogas, mostly methane, that can generate electricity or be cleaned into renewable natural gas. The EPA’s AgSTAR program counted 400 operating livestock digester projects in the U.S. as of June 2024, 343 of them handling dairy manure.
In 2023, these digesters cut emissions by 14.8 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent and produced about 3.29 million megawatt-hours equivalent of energy, according to EPA.
10. Agrivoltaics
Agrivoltaics means farming and producing solar power on the same land. The National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL) describes it as pairing solar with agriculture, with space for crops, grazing and native habitats under and between the panels.
For a farm, it can mean a second product from the same acres: electricity alongside crops or livestock.
Many precision tools depend on data and an internet connection. In 2025, 85% of U.S. farms had internet access and 82% had a smartphone, according to the USDA NASS Computer Usage and Ownership report. Software and AI tools that analyze field data build on that connectivity.
Why Agricultural Technology Matters
For the environment, many agricultural technology examples have one thing in common: they aim to put inputs in the right place. Variable-rate fertilizer targets nitrogen to where crops need it, drip irrigation delivers water to the roots, and digesters capture methane from manure. That is why agtech sits close to sustainable agriculture and regenerative farming practices, which focus on soil and water health.
Water is the clearest case. Farms draw on rivers and aquifers that refill at very different speeds; in the Colorado and New Mexico parts of the High Plains aquifer, pumping has probably exceeded natural recharge since the mid-1960s, according to USGS. We explain that difference in our guide to whether water is a renewable resource.
For students, a simple way to group modern agricultural technology is by what it saves: labor (auto-steer, autonomous tractors), inputs (yield maps, VRT, drones), water (drip, sensors), land (vertical farms, agrivoltaics) and emissions (digesters). For more technologies outside farming, see our list of environmental technology examples.
If you farm or garden at home, the cheapest technology to start with is water-related: a drip line on a timer and a simple soil-moisture meter are low-cost ways to avoid overwatering.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are 5 examples of agricultural technology?
Five common examples are GPS auto-steer tractors, yield monitors with variable-rate application, crop-spraying drones, drip irrigation, and hydroponic greenhouses. Others include satellite crop maps, gene-edited crops, manure digesters and solar panels over farmland.
How common is precision technology on U.S. farms?
It depends on farm size. USDA ERS found auto-steer guidance on 70% of large-scale crop-producing farms and 52% of midsize farms in 2023, and yield monitors, yield maps and soil maps on 68% of large-scale crop-producing farms.
What is precision agriculture?
Precision agriculture is farming that uses location-specific data from GPS, sensors, yield monitors and imagery to apply seed, water, fertilizer and pesticide only where they are needed. GAO, citing USDA, reports that 27% of U.S. farms and ranches used precision agriculture practices in 2023.
Is agricultural technology good for the environment?
Often, but not automatically. Variable-rate fertilizer and drip irrigation aim to apply inputs only where crops need them, and digesters capture methane from manure. Some technologies have trade-offs, such as the electricity use of indoor vertical farms, so the benefit depends on how each tool is used.
What is the newest technology in agriculture?
Recent additions include fully autonomous tractors, which John Deere unveiled in 2022, crop-spraying drones, gene-edited crops and agrivoltaics, which combine solar panels with crops or grazing on the same land.
We send one email a week. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. See our Privacy Policy.
