The “AI moment” in agriculture is a story about workforce, education, rural communities, public health and national security. It is also a story about trade, competitiveness and whether the United States will lead the world in a food system that is productive, resilient and trustworthy — or fall behind in a global race where data, algorithms and digital infrastructure increasingly define market advantage. It is a human story.
Artificial intelligence can help improve fertilizer use, detect plant disease earlier, optimize irrigation schedules, predict yield, reduce fuel use, monitor, predict performance earlier, identify and prevent disease, improving animal welfare, resiliency and profitability. We can improve quality control and reduce waste, forecast demand, reduce spoilage and identify vulnerabilities before they become costly disruptions.
But the opportunities come with serious challenges. It depends on data, and data in agriculture is uneven — by region, by commodity, by farm size, and by access to connectivity. AI also depends on trust: trust that the tool is accurate, that it does not disadvantage smaller operations, that it respects privacy, and that it does not further concentrate power and profit away from rural communities and toward distant corporate centers. Those are human decisions to be made. We must move forward with the basic idea that AI and technology must serve people, not replace them, and it must broaden opportunity rather than narrow it. We need a society that is AI-literate in the same way as science and cultural literacy. That means AI literacy belongs to all of us.
In rural American communities, agriculture remains one of the most powerful economic engines. AI could be a tool that reverses the decline — creating new roles for technicians, data-savvy farm managers, equipment specialists, extension educators and rural entrepreneurs who build or adapt local solutions. This is why education and workforce development must be integrated, practical, and community-connected. Students should not encounter agriculture as a narrow vocational track or science as a detached academic exercise. They should encounter food systems as real-world problem spaces where biology, economics, ethics, history and technology all intersect. A lesson about soil health is also a lesson about climate resilience, water policy, land stewardship and long-term productivity. A lesson about livestock nutrition is also a lesson about economics, greenhouse gas mitigation, animal welfare, and consumer perception. A lesson about trade is also a lesson about geopolitics, transportation infrastructure, labor markets and the stability of rural reminded livelihoods.