The Fourth Agricultural Revolution: AI’s Role in Feeding the Future

Farmers as Digital Agronomists

Traditionally, farming has been a mix of hard work, intuition, and inherited knowledge. With AI, those instincts are strengthened by real-time insights. Instead of treating fields uniformly, farmers can now manage crops at the level of individual plots, or even individual plants.

In the U.S., roughly 68% of large crop farms already use digital agriculture tools such as yield monitors and soil maps. The next leap comes from AI-driven systems. Soil sensors, connected to intelligent platforms, can analyze conditions and automatically adjust irrigation and fertilization. Rather than relying on guesswork, farmers can make precise, data-driven decisions that save time, water, and inputs while safeguarding yields.

Automation pushes this further. AI enables machines to prepare soil, plant seeds, detect pests, irrigate, or even harvest, freeing farmers to focus on strategy and innovation. Farming becomes less about repetitive labor and more about guiding digital systems, positioning farmers as “digital agronomists.”

Unlocking New Insights

AI’s true power lies in uncovering patterns humans often miss. Advanced models can reveal how irrigation timing affects pest behavior or how soil carbon shifts under different crop rotations. By running millions of “what if” simulations, AI can suggest unconventional strategies: asynchronous planting, novel intercropping, or microbial solutions to reduce fertilizer dependency.

Already, AI is being used to:

• Auto-calibrate irrigation, fertilization, and pest control at the micro-zone level
  
  
• Create digital twin farms to simulate extreme weather or disease scenarios
  
  
• Refine predictive crop insurance models
  
  
• Accelerate plant breeding with insight-driven recommendations

The future may hold even more radical possibilities, from swarm robotics to closed-loop, zero-waste urban micro-farms.

Closing the Yield Gap

AI’s benefits extend far beyond industrial agriculture. Smallholder farmers—especially in low-income countries, stand to gain significantly. Hyper-local weather forecasting, for instance, has already cut farmer debt in half by improving preparedness for climate shocks.

The global stakes are enormous. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, one-third of all food produced, about 1.3 billion tons annually, is lost between farm and fork. Tackling this waste at its source is one of AI’s biggest opportunities.

The economic upside is clear as well. Generative AI alone has the potential to create $100 billion in agricultural value, through yield improvements, input optimization, and labor efficiency. More importantly, AI helps farmers manage multiple goals simultaneously: profitability, sustainability, and climate resilience, while ensuring food security for a growing population.

A Smarter, More Resilient Future

AI isn’t replacing farmers; it’s equipping them with powerful tools to succeed in an increasingly complex environment. By combining data-driven insights with automation, AI enables farming that is more productive, profitable, and sustainable.

Whether it’s smallholders in rural communities or large-scale agribusinesses, AI is accelerating agriculture’s transformation into a smarter, more resilient system, capable of feeding the world while safeguarding resources for future generations.

At Orbia Netafim, this is the future we are working toward: agriculture that grows more with less.