Seventy-five percent of the country's farmers and ranchers have tried a general AI tool such as ChatGPT or Gemini on the operation. A MorganMyers survey found that number, and NAFB News Service carried the firm's account in June1. Greg Ehm, the firm's senior vice president of agriculture, called the finding proof of farmer curiosity about new tools. Dairy producers, operators under 35 and the largest farms drove most of that trial rate. Row crop growers sat near the back of the line.
The easy read treats that number as a verdict. American agriculture went digital, cab to kitchen table, in two seasons. That count treats a chatbot opened once the same as one opened every planting season. It buries the industry's largest group inside an average built mostly from everybody else.
Row crop growers plant corn, soybeans and wheat across the Corn Belt and the Plains. They make up 59 percent of farmers worldwide on their own, a McKinsey Global Farmer Insights count reported by Ag Bull Trading found6. Another 22 percent split row crops and specialty crops, and the remaining 19 percent grow specialty crops only, the three groups adding to 100 percent of the farmers McKinsey counted worldwide. Fold the middle group into the row crop count, and row crop production touches 81 percent of those same farmers. Those are the same farmers least likely to register in the adoption count everyone is celebrating.
Chart 1
Row crop-only growers make up 59 percent of McKinsey's global farmer survey
Share of 5,500 farmers surveyed worldwide, by crop focus, McKinsey Global Farmer Insights 2026
Source: Ag Bull Trading [6]. Chart by The AILately.com Desk.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Row crop only | 59% |
| Row and specialty | 22% |
| Specialty only | 19% |
| Whole | 100% |
David Fiocco, a senior partner at McKinsey, worked on the survey. He framed the trend as a leap forward for the growers using it. "It has dramatically changed the way growers are able to rapidly get agronomic advice," Fiocco said. He was describing chatbots that now answer questions a call to an agronomist once settled2.
The verb he chose, changed, does heavier work than tested or piloted would. It names a result already finished, past the stage a cautious researcher usually claims. Fiocco's own numbers back a narrower claim than his sentence implies. North America's adoption rate reached 23 percent, and only 10 of those percentage points came from growers willing to pay. The other 13 settled for a free version2.
That paid-to-free ratio matters more for row crop operations than the headline trial rate does. A corn and soybean farm earns its margin in cents per bushel, so a subscription has to clear a specific bar within a single season: lower seed cost, lower fertilizer cost or more bushels at harvest. Dairy parlors and specialty vegetable operations price AI against labor they already pay for every day. That difference explains why those operations adopted faster inside the same survey.
Fifty-five percent of row crop growers fell into the survey's lowest adoption tier. A companion count of the MorganMyers numbers found that share, against 64 percent of dairy producers who qualified as active users, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported3. Growers under 35 posted an identical 64 percent active-use rate in a separate tally of the same survey7.
Farm size followed the same line. Operations large enough to spread a software subscription across thousands of acres adopted fastest. The smaller farms a subscription would barely touch lagged behind them.
Chart 2
Dairy producers and growers under 35 use AI at 64 percent, 19 points above row crop growers
Share of farmers in each segment classified as active AI users, MorganMyers survey, June 2026
Each bar is one farm segment: the accent bar is row crop growers, and the two gray bars show dairy producers and growers under 35 tied 19 points ahead.
Sources: Iowa Capital Dispatch [3]; Ag Bull Trading [7]. Chart by The AILately.com Desk.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Row crop growers | 45% |
| Dairy producers | 64% |
| Growers under 35 | 64% |
Agriculture met this shape of choice before. Iowa farmers planted hybrid seed corn on 6 percent of the state's acreage in 1935. Adoption reached 10 percent in 1936, then more than half by 1938, once a catastrophic drought showed what the new seed could survive, Pioneer's own history of the crop records8.
The hybrid cost money every spring. A farmer who saved and replanted the old open-pollinated seed got a weaker crop than one who bought fresh hybrid stock from a seed company. Scale decided who could absorb that annual bill first. Pioneer Hi-Bred built a seed business on the farmers who could.
Michael Langemeier directs Purdue's Center for Commercial Agriculture. He ran a barometer survey the same season, and it reached a different conclusion than the celebratory trial count. Fifty-two percent of the 400 farmers his team surveyed in June rated AI and data-driven tools as carrying a negligible payoff for their own operation. Sixty-three percent said the recommendations those tools generate are sometimes too complicated to follow on the ground45.
"I think there will be meaningful benefits, but at least at this point, the majority of respondents really haven't figured out how the AI or data-driven tools [are] going to help their operation," Langemeier said4. His hedge, at least at this point, leaves next year's barometer room to move. Researchers write sentences like that one. Sellers write different ones.
Row crop country is left to ask who pays for a tool a majority of its own growers calls more trouble than help. Who profits from a trial rate that reads as triumph in a press release? Where does the risk land when a seed company's old bargain becomes a software company's new one?
McKinsey counts the trying. Purdue counts the believing. The gap between those two counts is the row crop farmer, asked again to buy in before the return shows up on a balance sheet.
The ledger holds the verdict here, the survey only the attendance. Dairy barns and 35-year-old operators can run this experiment, because the daily labor bill already makes a software subscription a rounding error. Row crop growers measure the same tool against a few cents a bushel, a harder number to move. That harder number is why the country's largest group of farmers keeps finishing last in its own industry's adoption count. The Signal, AI Lately's daily email brief, tracks where that count lands next, with a signup waiting at the bottom of this page.
Sources
- Rusty Halvorson, "AI Use and Skepticism in Agriculture Is Broad," KFGO (NAFB News Service), June 18, 2026, https://kfgo.com/2026/06/18/ai-use-and-skepticism-in-agriculture-is-broad/
- Staff, "Farmers Adopting AI Faster Than Any Other Technology," Precision Farming Dealer, Sept. 19, 2026, https://www.precisionfarmingdealer.com/articles/7287-farmers-adopting-ai-faster-than-any-other-technology
- Cami Koons, "Survey shows farmers split on AI use in the fields, majority skeptical of results," Iowa Capital Dispatch, June 24, 2026, https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2026/06/24/survey-shows-farmers-split-on-ai-use-in-the-fields-majority-skeptical-of-results/
- Jennifer Marston, "Many growers still find 'no meaningful benefit' from AI use on the farm: survey," AgFunder News, July 15, 2026, https://agfundernews.com/many-growers-still-find-no-meaningful-benefit-from-ai-use-on-the-farm-survey
- Staff, "High input-cost concerns continue to weigh on farmer sentiment," Purdue University Center for Commercial Agriculture, July 7, 2026, https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2026/07/high-input-cost-concerns-continue-to-weigh-on-farmer-sentiment.html
- Jim Wiesemeyer, "Farmers Tighten Spending and Demand More From Innovation," Ag Bull Trading, Sept. 8, 2026, https://www.agbull.com/farmers-tighten-spending-and-demand-more-from-innovation/
- Staff, "Farmers Embrace AI, But Trust Remains the Biggest Barrier," Ag Bull Trading, June 16, 2026, https://www.agbull.com/farmers-embrace-ai-but-trust-remains-the-biggest-barrier/
- Staff, "A Brief History of Corn - From Domestication to 1995," Pioneer (Corteva Agriscience), Dec. 19, 2022, https://www.pioneer.com/us/agronomy/domestication-of-corn.html