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Smart Agriculture & AgriTech 2026 — John Deere / Climate FieldView / OneSoil / Trimble / Tortuga / Bowery / Plenty / See & Spray / Carbon Robotics / NEC AGRIST / Kubota / Yanmar Deep Dive

🇰🇷KO🇺🇸EN🇯🇵JA
Split View필사 모드
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Prologue — Soil Work Became Data Work

May 2026, an Iowa cornfield. A John Deere 9RX 830-horsepower tractor drives itself in a straight line within 0~5cm of error for 30 hours straight. The cab monitor displays soil moisture, NDVI, and weed density refreshed every second. The towed See & Spray Ultimate identifies weeds 360 times per second across 36 cameras and fires individual nozzles. Herbicide use is down 65% on the same acreage.

The same hour, a California berry farm. Tortuga AgTech autonomous robots judge strawberry ripeness with color cameras under LED lights at night, snip stems with six-axis grippers, and place fruit in clamshells. 50 kg per hour — three human pickers worth of work, in one machine.

The same hour, a giant warehouse in New Jersey. Bowery Farming's vertical farm sits empty. They filed Chapter 11 in November 2024 and were sold off in 2025. The same year, Plenty closed their Laguna Beach farm, and AeroFarms emerged from Chapter 11 but cut 60% of staff.

On one side, precision agriculture enters a golden age. On the other, vertical farming collapses. Same "AgriTech" banner, opposite fates. Why? And who owns the 2026 farm data — and how do farmers control it?

This article maps the entire 2026 AgriTech landscape — US, Europe, Korea, Japan — in one sitting. Tractors, robots, sensors, software, VC funding, policy, open source, and broken promises.

Chapter 1 · The 2026 Smart Agriculture Map — Four Big Categories

The landscape first. AgriTech is not one industry. At least four independent markets sit under one umbrella.

1.1 Precision Agriculture

Moving tractors, combines, and sprayers across existing farmland more accurately using GPS, sensors, and AI. Market size: ~$10.5B in 2026, CAGR 12%. Major players:

  • John Deere — ~60% market share, tractor + autonomy + Operations Center (FaaS)
  • Trimble Ag — RTK GPS / autonomous guidance (PTx Trimble JV with AGCO launched 2024)
  • AGCO + Fendt — Fendt One platform, Massey Ferguson brand
  • CNH Industrial — Case IH + New Holland, FieldOps platform
  • Climate FieldView (Bayer) — data / decision SaaS

1.2 Vertical Farming / Controlled Environment Agriculture (CEA)

Growing crops in urban warehouses under LEDs. Big crisis in 2024-25:

  • Bowery Farming — Chapter 11 bankruptcy (November 2024), asset sale
  • Plenty — Laguna Beach and Compton farms closed (March 2024), Walmart partnership scaled back
  • AeroFarms — recovered from Chapter 11, but cut 60% of headcount
  • Manna CEA (Korea) — one of the few players staying profitable

1.3 Agricultural Robots

Automating harvest, weeding, and transplanting.

  • Carbon Robotics LaserWeeder G2 — burns weeds with lasers (0.8 mph)
  • Tortuga AgTech — autonomous strawberry, raspberry, blueberry harvest
  • John Deere See & Spray Ultimate — targeted herbicide (deployed on 500k+ hectares)
  • NEC AGRIST (Japan) — bell pepper harvest robot
  • Kubota Agri Robo — autonomous tractor and rice transplanter

1.4 Satellite / Drone / Data

Looking down from above the field.

  • OneSoil (Belarus to EU) — satellite + AI for field boundaries and crop classification
  • Planet Labs — daily satellite imagery (every field)
  • Climate FieldView — farmer decision integration
  • Indigo Ag — seeds + microbes + data
  • OPTiM Geo Scan (Japan) — drone + AI orthophoto

These four have different funding sources, customers, and failure patterns. Success in one category does not transfer to another. That became painfully clear in 2024-25.

Chapter 2 · John Deere — Beyond Tractors, Into FaaS (Farming-as-a-Service)

John Deere's market share in North American large tractors tops 60%. But the 2026 Deere is no longer a tractor company.

2.1 Auto-Steer / Autonomous Tractor History

  • 1999 — Deere's first GPS Parallel Tracking ships
  • 2002 — AutoTrac (2.5cm RTK precision)
  • 2022 — 8R series fully autonomous tractor announced (CES)
  • 2024 — 9RX series autonomous tractor + autonomous 4640 truck
  • 2025-26 — See & Spray Ultimate adopted on 2,000+ farms

2.2 Operations Center — Deere's Real Weapon

Operations Center is a SaaS platform. Every Deere machine streams telemetry to the cloud, and farmers see it on web and mobile.

  • MyOperations — every hectare's work history (planting, spraying, harvest)
  • Field Analyzer — automatic yield map generation
  • Connect Mobile — real-time guidance to the operator
  • Equipment Management — per-machine maintenance schedules and fault alerts

2.3 See & Spray Ultimate — Targeted Herbicide

See & Spray Ultimate runs 36 cameras processing 360 images per second. Each nozzle turns on and off independently. Only weeds get herbicide, crops are skipped.

  • Herbicide use down 65% on average (Deere internal data, 2024)
  • Deployment: 1M acres in 2024 to 2M+ acres in 2025 (Deere IR)
  • Price: machine + 32-foot bar at ~$600k plus Operations Center subscription

2.4 Farmer Discontent — the "Right to Repair" Movement

Deere is the emperor of precision ag — and also the enemy of many farmers. The cause: Right to Repair.

  • Deere tractors require company-certified tools for diagnosis and repair
  • Farmers cannot fix their own tractors (software locks)
  • 2023: US FTC files suit against Deere
  • 2024-25: Right to Repair bills passed in Colorado, New York, Minnesota

This conflict is still active in 2026. Deere is expanding "Customer Self Repair," but the software core remains locked.

Chapter 3 · Climate FieldView (Bayer) — The Standard for Farm Data

Climate FieldView is the de facto standard for agricultural SaaS. Launched by Climate Corp in 2013, acquired by Monsanto for $930M the same year, and absorbed by Bayer when Monsanto merged in 2018.

3.1 What It Does

  • Aggregates telemetry from tractors and combines (Deere, CNH, AGCO all supported)
  • Stores per-hectare planting, fertilization, spraying, and harvest data
  • AI analysis for yield forecasts and fertilizer recommendations
  • Integrates seed company (Bayer DEKALB, Asgrow) recommendations

3.2 Market Share and Conflict

  • ~60% of US farmland (150M acres) uses FieldView
  • Pricing: first year free, then $5 per hectare
  • Conflict: concern that Bayer uses farmer data to sell more seeds and chemicals
  • 2022: US farmer groups demanded clearer data ownership

Bayer's answer was adopting the "Ag Data Transparency" mark with American Farm Bureau Federation. But the value of farmer data is increasingly obvious.

3.3 Competitors

  • John Deere Operations Center — optimized for Deere machines, growing seed company integrations
  • CNH FieldOps — launched 2024, integrates Case IH and New Holland
  • AGCO Fuse — Trimble integration (2024 JV)
  • Granular (Corteva) — Corteva chemical and seed integration, strong in US Midwest
  • Farmobile / AGRIVI / xarvio — smaller players

Chapter 4 · OneSoil — Satellite + AI, From Belarus to the EU

OneSoil is a satellite AI company founded in 2017 in Minsk, Belarus. After Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and Belarus's role, they relocated to Switzerland.

4.1 What It Does

  • Auto-extracts field boundaries from free Sentinel-2 satellite imagery (10m resolution)
  • Auto-classifies crop types from weekly imagery (corn, soy, wheat, sunflower)
  • Detects anomalies from NDVI trends (disease, drought, overspray)
  • Free mobile app + enterprise API

4.2 Why Free

OneSoil's farmer mobile app is free. Revenue model:

  • OneSoil Pro — for agronomy consulting firms ($10/hectare/year)
  • OneSoil API — for seed, chemical, and insurance companies (contracts)
  • OneSoil Field Boundaries — global field boundary data (licensing)

As of 2024: ~1 million farmer users, 70 countries, 100M+ hectares tracked. A satellite AI built by Belarusian engineers became one of the de facto global standards. That detail matters.

4.3 Competitors

  • Planet Labs — daily satellite, but more expensive
  • EOS Data Analytics (Ukraine) — Crop Monitoring platform
  • xarvio (Bayer) — integrated with Bayer agrochemicals
  • CropX — soil sensor + satellite combo

Chapter 5 · Trimble Ag — The Original RTK GPS

Trimble was founded in 1978 as a surveying and GPS company. Agriculture became a major market in the 2020s.

5.1 Core Tech

  • RTK (Real Time Kinematic) GPS — 2.5cm precision, foundation of autonomous tractor guidance
  • Trimble Ag Software — field management (TrueGuide, FieldLevel)
  • Trimble Vantage — precision ag consulting network

5.2 PTx Trimble — the AGCO JV

In April 2024, AGCO and Trimble launched a joint venture called PTx Trimble. AGCO holds 85%, Trimble 15%. This entity:

  • Ships Trimble guidance as standard on AGCO tractors (Fendt, Massey Ferguson, Challenger, Valtra)
  • Absorbs Trimble Agriculture's farm-related business unit
  • Unifies a "PrecisionAg" platform (software + hardware)

Trimble focuses on surveying and construction, and AGCO took agriculture. A response to John Deere's closed ecosystem.

Chapter 6 · AGCO / Fendt / CNH Industrial — Tractor Competitors

The US market: Deere 60%, AGCO and CNH split the rest. The European market looks different.

6.1 AGCO (US)

  • 2024 revenue ~$14.5B
  • Brands: Fendt (premium German), Massey Ferguson (global mid-tier), Valtra (Nordics), Challenger (North America)
  • Strengthened precision ag via 2024 PTx Trimble JV
  • Fendt One platform — competing with Deere Operations Center

6.2 Fendt — German Premium at Its Peak

Fendt is AGCO's premium brand. Headquarters in Marktoberdorf, Germany.

  • Fendt Vario — continuously variable transmission (CVT), Fendt's standard since the 80s
  • Fendt IDEAL — single-wheelbase combine (for large farms)
  • Fendt Rogator — autonomous sprayer
  • Fendt One — integrated telemetry + precision ag

Fendt prices run 20-30% above equivalent Deere models, but European farmer loyalty is high.

6.3 CNH Industrial

  • Headquartered in the UK (separated from Iveco Group in 2022)
  • Brands: Case IH (North America), New Holland (global), Steyr (Austria)
  • FieldOps — integrated telemetry launched 2024
  • Acquired Raven Industries in 2025 (precision ag bolstering)

CNH lagged Deere by ~10 years, but is closing the gap fast. The 2024 FieldOps launch is a direct response to Deere Operations Center's closed nature.

Chapter 7 · Tortuga AgTech — Autonomous Fruit Harvest

Tortuga was founded in 2016 in Denver, Colorado. It autonomously harvests labor-intensive crops like berries and strawberries.

7.1 How It Works

  • Six-wheeled autonomous platform (works both outdoors and indoors)
  • Computer vision: color cameras judge ripeness (including Brix estimation)
  • Six-axis gripper: separates berries without cutting the stem
  • Night operation: artificial lighting + cameras enable 24-hour shifts
  • One robot does the work of three human pickers

7.2 Business Model

  • RaaS (Robotics-as-a-Service) — farmers rent by the hour rather than buying
  • ~25perhour(vs. 25 per hour (vs. ~18/hour for human labor + overhead)
  • Night work plus zero labor compliance burden (offsets immigrant labor shortages)
  • 2024 deployments in California, Florida, Mexico

7.3 Funding

  • 2022 Series A: $20M (AgFunder and others)
  • 2024 Series B: $40M
  • Cumulative ~$70M

Profitability is still far off, but the longer farm labor shortages (especially around US H-2A visa friction) persist, the faster Tortuga-style models grow.

Chapter 8 · Bowery + Plenty + AeroFarms — The Vertical Farming Crisis

Vertical farming took billions in the late 2010s on the promise of sustainable urban agriculture. In 2024-25 that promise collapsed.

8.1 What Went Wrong

The unit economics of vertical farming were hard from the start.

  • Electricity cost — LED lighting is 60%+ of operating cost
  • Capex — building one farm runs $100M+ (automation + building)
  • Limited crops — only leafy greens are profitable; others (tomato, strawberry) have low unit prices
  • Distribution cost — even grown inside cities, getting to supermarkets still costs
  • 2022-23 electricity spike — Ukraine war + inflation

8.2 Bowery Farming

  • Founded 2014, ~$650M raised cumulative (Google Ventures, Khosla, etc.)
  • Once the largest US vertical farm operator
  • November 2024: Chapter 11 filing
  • 2025: asset sale, effectively shut down

8.3 Plenty

  • Founded 2014, ~$940M raised cumulative (SoftBank, Walmart, Bezos)
  • March 2024: Laguna Beach and Compton farms closed
  • Walmart partnership scaled back
  • 2025: Wyoming Laramie strawberry farm in development (one ray of hope)

8.4 AeroFarms

  • Founded 2004, ~$330M raised cumulative
  • 2023: Chapter 11 filing
  • 2024: emerged from Chapter 11, but cut 60% of headcount
  • Virginia and New Jersey farms still operating

8.5 Survivors — Crop + Region Match

  • Local Bounti — US Midwest and Mountain region, supermarket private-label supply
  • Manna CEA (Korea) — government subsidies + Japan export
  • Infarm (Berlin) — in-supermarket micro farms (scaled back 2023)

The lesson: vertical farm economics depend entirely on "what crop, in what region." The blanket "urban food security" vision collapsed under unit cost.

Chapter 9 · Indigo Ag + Granular (Corteva) — Seeds + Data

9.1 Indigo Ag

Founded in 2014 in Boston. Started with microbial seed coatings.

  • Indigo Carbon — farmers practice no-till and cover crops for carbon sequestration to sell credits
  • ~$1B raised cumulative (Baillie Gifford and others)
  • 2022 IPO attempt failed
  • 2024-25 carbon market price drop caused difficulty

9.2 Granular (owned by Corteva)

Granular was founded in 2014 and acquired by DowDuPont (now Corteva) for $300M in 2017.

  • Granular Business — farm accounting and financial SaaS
  • Granular Agronomy — crop decision integration
  • Integrated with Corteva seeds (Pioneer, Brevant) and chemicals (Enlist, Avipel)
  • Strong share in US Midwest corn and soy farmers

It's a Bayer-FieldView vs. Corteva-Granular rivalry. The model of selling seeds, chemicals, and data as a bundle is hardening.

Chapter 10 · Carbon Robotics — Burning Weeds With Lasers

Carbon Robotics was founded in 2018 in Seattle. The flagship product is LaserWeeder G2.

10.1 How It Works

  • Tractor-towed (3.7m wide)
  • 32 computer vision cameras distinguish weeds from crops
  • Thirty 150W CO2 lasers — burn weed growth points in 1ms
  • Travels at 0.8 mph (1.3 km/h), covering 1 acre per hour

10.2 Why It Beats Herbicide

  • Chemical-free — zero herbicide (organic-compatible)
  • Effective against resistant weeds — works even on glyphosate-resistant species
  • Soil-friendly — no tilling, so microbiome stays intact
  • Downside: expensive (~$1M per unit), only large farms see ROI

10.3 Where It's Used

  • Lettuce, carrot, spinach, leafy greens (high weeding cost)
  • Organic farms
  • California's Salinas Valley (50+ LaserWeeder units)

2024 Series D: 70M,cumulative70M, cumulative 160M. Farmers replacing herbicide with photons is symbolically big.

Chapter 11 · NVIDIA Jetson + Edge AI on Tractors

Autonomous tractors and farm robots became possible because GPUs got small. NVIDIA Jetson is at the center.

11.1 The Jetson Lineup

  • Jetson Nano ($99) — entry, lightweight models
  • Jetson Xavier NX — 21 TOPS, the agricultural robot standard
  • Jetson Orin — 275 TOPS, autonomous tractor class
  • Jetson AGX Orin — 275 TOPS plus industrial casing

11.2 How It Gets Used in Farming

  • John Deere See & Spray — Jetson AGX based (inferred)
  • Carbon Robotics LaserWeeder — multiple Jetson Orin units
  • Tortuga AgTech — Jetson Xavier
  • NEC AGRIST — Jetson Nano + custom ASIC
  • OPTiM Geo Scan — Jetson Nano for drones

Edge AI matters on farms because of rural connectivity. 5G and LTE coverage is patchy in many places, and cloud round-trips don't match a tractor's 30 FPS demand. Jetson finishes inference locally and sends only results to the cloud.

11.3 Agriculture-Specific AI Models

  • YOLO family — weed and crop classification (real-time object detection)
  • U-Net / Segment Anything — leaf and fruit segmentation
  • Vision Transformer — disease identification
  • NeRF / Gaussian Splatting — 3D crop reconstruction (yield estimation)

Agriculture has become one of AI's biggest application domains. Not by replacing a million farmers, but by letting one farmer manage 1,000 hectares.

Chapter 12 · Open Source — FarmOS / OpenAg / Open Source Ecology

Counter to closed agricultural data, there are open source projects.

12.1 FarmOS

  • Drupal-based open source farm management system (PHP)
  • Popular with small farms, CSAs, and educational farms
  • Core features: work log, inventory, harvest tracking, asset management
  • Data stays on your own server (opposite of FieldView and Operations Center)
  • GitHub farmOS/farmOS (thousands of stars)

12.2 OpenAg (MIT) — a Vision That Ended

The MIT Media Lab's OpenAg project pushed a "Food Computer" vision in the late 2010s. The dream that anyone in a city could build a mini vertical farm.

  • 2019: MIT shut down the project (controversy over inflated results)
  • Code remains on GitHub (OpenAgInitiative)
  • A community forked it into PFC v3 (Personal Food Computer)
  • Lesson: farm unit economics don't yield to code alone

12.3 Open Source Ecology (OSE)

  • A nonprofit producing open source designs for 50 farm machines
  • Tractor, CNC, brick press, and more
  • The "Global Village Construction Set" vision
  • Not fast-growing, but consistent

Open source agriculture is less about commercial success and more about data sovereignty and applicability to developing countries. Farmers can build their own tools when they don't like the available ones.

Chapter 13 · Sensors — SoilOptix / Arable / Pessl Instruments

There's no precision ag without data. Sensor companies make that data.

13.1 SoilOptix (Canada)

  • Soil gamma-ray sensor (measures soil composition via natural gamma rays)
  • Attached to a tractor, scans fields at 25 km/h
  • Maps pH, phosphorus, potassium, organic matter, water holding capacity
  • Cuts fertilizer use to ~25% while holding yield

13.2 Arable (US)

  • A single device "Mark 3" measures 14 variables
  • Rainfall, solar radiation, temperature, humidity, evapotranspiration, NDVI, etc.
  • Integrates satellite + IoT
  • Popular for wine grape vineyards (California, New Zealand)

13.3 Pessl Instruments (Austria)

  • METOS (weather stations) since 1985
  • Disease prediction models for 5,000+ crops
  • METOS, iMETOS, METOS BASE lineup
  • The standard tool for European agronomy consultancies

Beyond these, there are dozens — CropX (Israel, soil sensors), Sentera (drones + multispectral), Teralytic (60cm soil profilers), and more. The weakness is integration — farmers end up checking five vendor apps.

Chapter 14 · Korea — RDA + Smart Farm Generation 4

Korean smart farming is government-led. The Rural Development Administration (RDA), Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (MAFRA), and KOFAS (Smart Farm Innovation Valley) share policy, funding, and R&D.

14.1 Smart Farm Generations

  • Generation 1 — remote monitoring (check greenhouse on smartphone)
  • Generation 2 — remote control (auto ventilation and irrigation)
  • Generation 3 — data-driven decisions (yield forecasting)
  • Generation 4 — autonomous operations AI (minimal human intervention, real rollout starts 2024)

14.2 Government Support

  • Smart Farm Innovation Valleys — four sites: Gimje, Sangju, Miryang, Goheung
  • Young Farmer Smart Farm Incubator — 2-year training + leased farms
  • Low-interest loans — 90% financing for land and smart farm facilities (up to KRW 3B)
  • Data platforms — public data via KAMIS, NongLink, etc.

14.3 Key Companies

  • Manna CEA — vertical farms, Japan export, one of few Korean survivors
  • Greenplus — greenhouse materials and environmental control (KOSDAQ-listed)
  • Wooshin Industries — eco-friendly farm automation
  • easyFarm — farmer ERP / accounting
  • MyFarm (Permit) — agricultural direct sales + farm management

14.4 Korean Strengths and Weaknesses

  • Strengths: clear government backing, excellent IT infrastructure, export potential to Japan and Southeast Asia
  • Weaknesses: small market, fragmented data standards, average farmer age 67

Smart farming is a prescription for Korean rural population and labor problems. The real bottleneck is the speed at which farmers adopt IT tools.

Chapter 15 · Japan — NEC AGRIST / OPTiM / Rakuten / Kubota / Yanmar

Japan's core agricultural problem is average farmer age 68. This demographic crisis drives every Japanese AgriTech effort.

15.1 NEC AGRIST — Bell Pepper Harvest Robot

  • 2019: started as an NEC internal venture, spun off in 2021
  • "L (eL)" autonomous bell pepper and paprika harvest robot
  • Computer vision + gripper, capable of night work
  • RaaS rental model for labor-shortage farms
  • 2024: deployed at 30+ farms across Japan

15.2 OPTiM Geo Scan — Drone + AI Orthophoto

  • Automates farm surveying and orthophoto production via drone
  • AI auto-computes acreage and crop distribution
  • Used to file government agriculture subsidy applications
  • ~10,000 farmer cumulative users

15.3 Rakuten e-Nogaku

  • Rakuten's agricultural ERP / accounting
  • A tool lowering the entry bar for returning-to-farm youth
  • Integrated with the Rakuten marketplace for direct sales

15.4 Kubota — Autonomous Tractors and Rice Transplanters

  • Japan's top farm machinery maker, revenue ~JPY 2.5T
  • Agri Robo series — autonomous tractors, rice transplanters, combines
  • 2024: US market entry (compact tractor segment)
  • One of John Deere's global competitors

15.5 Yanmar Smart Pilot

  • Yanmar's autonomous operations platform
  • RTK GPS + AI for tractor self-driving
  • Optimized for Japan's narrow plots (minimal turning radius)
  • Some exports to Korea

Japan hit the same demographic problem Korea is now facing — 30 years earlier — so it leads in farm automation. There's a lot for Korea to learn from the Japanese model.

Chapter 16 · Who Should Learn AgriTech

This field has no single profession. Agronomy, robotics, software, policy, and finance all meet here.

16.1 Agronomy / Crop Science

  • Crop physiology, soil chemistry, disease management
  • US / Europe: undergrad (Iowa State, Wageningen, UC Davis)
  • Korea: Seoul National University, Gyeongsang National University
  • Japan: Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Tohoku University Agriculture

16.2 Agricultural Robotics / Mechatronics

  • 6-axis manipulators, autonomous navigation, ROS
  • ETH Zurich, CMU Robotics
  • Korea: KAIST, SNU Mechanical
  • Industry internships: John Deere, Kubota, Yanmar, Tortuga

16.3 Agricultural AI / Vision

  • YOLO, SAM, NeRF, computer vision
  • Agricultural datasets (PlantVillage, DeepWeeds)
  • AgriAI conferences: ICRA, AgriRobotics, ASABE

16.4 Agricultural Policy / Economics

  • USDA Farm Bill
  • EU CAP (Common Agricultural Policy)
  • Korea MAFRA / RDA
  • Japan MAFF

16.5 Agricultural VC / Finance

  • AgFunder — agriculture VC media + fund
  • Cultivate Ventures — Cargill's agricultural VC
  • S2G Ventures — food and ag impact fund
  • Anterra Capital — European agricultural VC
  • Korea: Foundation of Agri. Tech. Commercialization, Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries Mother Fund

Chapter 17 · References

Agriculture is humanity's oldest industry and so is also the slowest to change. In 2026, 60% of tractors are still driven by humans. Vertical farms collapsed. FieldView collects data but farmers started asking whose data it is. Yet one thing is clear — soil work is becoming data work. John Deere's RTK GPS, Carbon Robotics' lasers, NEC AGRIST's pepper robot, RDA's Smart Farm Generation 4 — all point in the same direction. One person managing a larger area with fewer resources. That's the core promise of 2026 AgriTech.

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