How big is the AgriTech market really?

How big is the AgriTech market really today?

The core AgriTech market is probably worth about $30–40 billion today, although published estimates range from barely $10 billion to almost $40 billion because researchers are counting very different businesses.

The latest numbers make the problem obvious. Ken Research puts the global AgriTech market at $31 billion for 2025. The Business Research Company estimates $34.58 billion in 2025 and $38.56 billion in 2026. Grand View Research uses the related label “smart agriculture” and arrives at $32.2 billion for 2026.

Then there is 6Wresearch, which recently updated its estimate to only $10.5 billion for 2025.

A threefold gap is too large to explain through forecasting assumptions. It comes mainly from scope.

6Wresearch uses a comparatively narrow technology definition built around areas such as analytics, sensors, connected devices and biotechnology. Ken Research includes precision equipment, farm software, robotics, sensing, digital advisory and agricultural data services. The Business Research Company stretches further into biotechnology, agrochemicals, marketplaces and supply-chain applications.

So there is no useful single AgriTech number until we decide what kind of business we are trying to measure.

For this article, we use roughly $30–40 billion as the most useful estimate of the core market: technology sold primarily to make farms more automated, measurable, connected or efficient. Broader definitions can legitimately produce much larger numbers, but they are measuring something different.

Market estimate	Latest relevant figure	What the definition appears to include
6Wresearch	$10.5B in 2025	Relatively narrow digital and connected AgriTech
Ken Research	$31B in 2025	Precision equipment, software, robotics, sensing, advisory, data
Grand View Research, smart agriculture	$32.2B in 2026	Hardware, software, livestock monitoring, precision farming, smart greenhouses
The Business Research Company	$34.58B in 2025	Digital technology plus biotechnology, marketplaces and wider applications
The Business Research Company	$38.56B in 2026	Same broader AgriTech definition
Our core range	~$30–40B	Commercial farm technology without counting entire adjacent industries
Broader AgriTech ecosystem	Well above $50B	Can include biologicals, indoor farming and more agricultural inputs

What should actually count as AgriTech?

AgriTech should cover technology whose value comes mainly from improving how agricultural production is measured, controlled, automated or optimized.

That gives us a fairly practical boundary.

Precision-farming systems belong inside it. So do farm-management software, agricultural sensors, machine vision, connected livestock systems, drones, smart irrigation, robotic equipment, autonomous functions and digital agronomy. The technology layer inside a smart greenhouse also makes sense.

Things become less clear when technology is embedded inside a much bigger product.

A $500,000 tractor can contain GPS guidance, cameras, connectivity, autonomous functions and sophisticated software. Those technology components clearly belong to AgriTech. Counting the tractor's entire selling price means we are also counting its engine, transmission, chassis, tires and hydraulics.

The same issue appears with seeds, fertilizers and crop protection. Modern agriculture uses enormous amounts of science, but describing the whole commercial seed or pesticide industry as AgriTech makes the category so broad that the number stops telling us much.

We need a definition narrower than “anything innovative used in agriculture” and wider than “software startups selling to farmers.” The $30–40 billion range fits that middle ground reasonably well.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AgriTech market report.

Why can't we just add all the AgriTech submarkets together?

Adding published AgriTech submarkets produces a badly inflated number because the same technology regularly appears in two or three categories at once.

Look at the latest Grand View Research estimates. Precision farming alone was worth $15.1 billion in 2025. Farm-management software was $4.8 billion. Agricultural drones, precision irrigation, autonomous farm equipment and smart greenhouses each have separate multibillion-dollar market estimates.

Those businesses overlap everywhere.

A drone used to map crop health may be counted in agricultural drones and precision farming. The analytics platform processing its imagery can appear in farm-management software. An autonomous sprayer combines precision guidance, machine vision, application control and robotics in one machine.

Indoor agriculture makes the duplication even easier to see. A smart greenhouse belongs inside greenhouse technology, controlled-environment agriculture and potentially indoor farming. Adding all three reports together would count a large part of the same infrastructure several times.

Bottom-up AgriTech estimates can therefore look impressively precise while being wrong by tens of billions of dollars.

AgriTech category	Approximate latest market size	Main overlap problem
Precision farming	$15.1B in 2025	Already contains hardware, sensors, software and services
Farm-management software	$4.8B in 2025	Much of it supports precision farming
Autonomous farm equipment	>$20B in some estimates	Often includes technologically enhanced conventional machinery
Precision irrigation	~$9B	Frequently included inside precision agriculture
Agricultural drones	~$3–4B	Often counted as precision-farming hardware
Smart greenhouses	~$6B	Overlaps greenhouse and indoor-farming markets
Vertical farming	~$10B	Includes infrastructure and farm output systems
Indoor farming	>$50B in broad estimates	Contains several narrower categories above

Should a John Deere tractor count as AgriTech?

Only the technology inside a modern tractor should automatically count as AgriTech; counting the entire machine can quickly turn the market into ordinary farm equipment.

John Deere shows why the distinction matters. Its Production & Precision Agriculture division generated $17.3 billion of net sales in fiscal 2025. That is already more than half of our entire core AgriTech estimate.

But Deere's division sells large tractors, harvesters, cotton equipment, tillage machines, sprayers, attachments and parts alongside precision technology. Calling the whole $17.3 billion an AgriTech business would assign billions of dollars of conventional machinery value to the technology market.

AGCO gives us a cleaner view of where the industry is moving. Its PTx precision-agriculture business now sells guidance, automation, retrofit hardware and farm software across mixed machinery fleets. AGCO introduced 14 new PTx products during 2025 and more than doubled its PTx Elite dealer network to over 70 locations. The company is targeting $2 billion of annual precision-agriculture revenue by 2029.

That is much closer to the revenue we actually want to measure.

Farm machinery and AgriTech are becoming harder to separate technically. Economically, we still have to separate them if we want a useful market size.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AgriTech market report.

How big is precision farming today?

Precision farming is currently a roughly $15–17 billion market and probably the largest cleanly measurable part of modern AgriTech.

Grand View Research's latest estimate puts global precision-farming revenue at $15.1 billion in 2025 and $16.8 billion in 2026, with the market projected to reach $38.8 billion by 2033.

Hardware still accounts for 66.7% of revenue.

That number tells us something important about what AgriTech looks like in practice. The industry is still built heavily around physical systems: guidance equipment, control hardware, sensing devices, cameras, application systems and machinery upgrades.

Software is becoming more important, but farming has not turned into a SaaS market.

The size of precision farming also gives us a useful check on the overall AgriTech estimate. If one reasonably mature category already generates roughly $15–17 billion, an entire core market of $10 billion is difficult to reconcile with commercial reality unless the definition is exceptionally narrow.

At the same time, a $100 billion core market today would require many other independent revenue pools of similar scale. We simply do not see them yet.

Is farm-management software actually a big business?

Farm-management software is now a real multibillion-dollar market, although physical technology still makes much more money in agriculture.

Grand View Research currently values farm-management software and related services at $5.5 billion for 2026, up from $4.8 billion in 2025.

Software itself accounted for almost two-thirds of the category in 2025. Precision farming was the largest agricultural use case, representing 43.3% of the market.

A $5 billion software category is no longer tiny. It is also nowhere close to dominating AgriTech.

That makes sense when we look at what farms actually need. Software can tell a grower where soil moisture is low, which field needs treatment or how a machine is performing. Capturing the economic value often requires irrigation hardware, a tractor, a sprayer, sensors or somebody physically doing the work.

The strongest agricultural software businesses therefore tend to sit close to operations rather than simply selling dashboards. Fleet management, agronomic records, input planning, irrigation control and equipment connectivity all connect software directly to something happening in the field.

Are agricultural drones and robots real businesses yet?

Agricultural drones and robots are already commercial businesses, but the revenue numbers become much less trustworthy when researchers count entire machines as “robotics.”

Agricultural drones are easier to understand. Current estimates put the global market in roughly the $3–4 billion range. Drones now inspect crops, map fields, measure plant health and increasingly spray agricultural inputs.

The move from observation to physical work is important. A drone that takes pictures has to prove that its information is worth paying for. A drone that replaces part of a spraying operation can be compared directly with labor, tractors, fuel and application costs.

Agricultural robotics has a messier market size.

Some researchers put autonomous farm equipment above $20 billion. That figure includes expensive machines with autonomous capabilities, so it should not be read as $20 billion of small robots roaming fields without humans.

The commercial direction is still clear. Deere, AGCO, CNH, Kubota and specialist companies are putting autonomy, computer vision and automated operation into working equipment. Much of the near-term robotics market will probably come through machines farmers already understand, including tractors, sprayers, harvesters and retrofit systems.

Agricultural robots are beyond the demo stage today. The harder question is how much of the machine's selling price should genuinely be attributed to robotics.

Should biologicals, seeds and pesticides count as AgriTech?

Agricultural biologicals can reasonably sit beside AgriTech, but counting all seeds and crop protection would inflate the market by well over $100 billion.

Biologicals are the closest call. Recent estimates generally put agricultural biologicals somewhere in the low-to-high teens of billions of dollars, depending on whether the report includes biopesticides, biostimulants, biofertilizers and related products.

These products increasingly rely on microbial science, genomics, computational discovery and advanced formulation. There is a legitimate argument for treating them as agricultural technology.

We prefer to show them separately.

The problem becomes much larger with commercial seeds and conventional crop protection. The global commercial-seed industry alone is roughly a $90 billion-plus business in recent estimates. Crop-protection estimates generally run from around $50 billion to almost $100 billion, depending on the definition.

Putting all of that inside AgriTech could add another $150–190 billion almost instantly.

The resulting number would sound impressive but answer a different question. Almost every modern agricultural input contains sophisticated science somewhere in its development process. That does not make its entire sales value part of the modern AgriTech market.

Our broader definition can therefore move from roughly $30–40 billion toward $45–60 billion once biologicals are added. Going much further starts to blur AgriTech into the agricultural-input industry.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AgriTech market report.

Does vertical farming still belong in the AgriTech market?

Vertical farming still belongs in the AgriTech story, but the entire value of a vertical farm should not be counted as technology revenue.

The distinction became much harder to ignore after the sector's venture boom collapsed.

Bowery Farming shut down after raising more than $700 million. Plenty entered bankruptcy after raising close to $1 billion. AppHarvest had raised more than $700 million before filing for Chapter 11, and AeroFarms also went through bankruptcy restructuring.

The technology itself did not disappear. Controlled environments still use lighting, sensors, automation, climate control, irrigation software and data systems, and commercial greenhouse technology continues to generate real revenue.

What failed was the assumption that financing huge indoor farms automatically created a huge technology market.

A vertical farm sells agricultural production. It also consumes real estate, electricity, labor, racks, HVAC systems and construction capital. Only part of that value belongs in an AgriTech TAM.

The failures of the last few years have actually made this distinction easier to see.

Are farmers actually using AgriTech at scale?

Large commercial farms are already using several forms of AgriTech at mainstream scale, while adoption across the full farm population remains much lower.

USDA data provide one of the clearest pictures.

In 2023, guidance and autosteering systems were used by 70% of large-scale U.S. crop farms and 52% of midsize farms. Yield monitors, yield maps or soil maps were used by 68% of large-scale crop farms.

Those adoption rates used to be in the single digits in the early 2000s.

The latest USDA technology survey also shows that the basic digital infrastructure is now widespread. In 2025, 85% of U.S. farms reported internet access, 82% had a smartphone and half used the internet to buy agricultural inputs. Internet purchasing rose 18% from the 2023 survey.

So we no longer need to ask whether farmers will ever use digital technology.

A better question today is which technologies justify their cost on which farms. Autosteering has already passed that test across much of large-scale crop agriculture. Variable-rate technology, drones, robotics and newer AI systems remain much less universal.

Why do large farms buy so much more AgriTech?

Large farms dominate expensive AgriTech adoption because a technology investment becomes much easier to justify when its cost is spread over thousands of acres or a large livestock operation.

USDA's 2023 data are unusually stark. Guidance autosteering was used by 70% of large-scale crop farms, 52% of midsize farms and only 9% of small farms. Variable-rate technology showed a similar pattern: 45% adoption among large-scale farms, 32% among midsize farms and 5% among small farms.

The global structure of agriculture makes this even more important.

FAO's best comprehensive estimate identifies more than 608 million farms worldwide. Around 84% are smaller than two hectares, yet those farms operate only about 12% of agricultural land. The largest 1% of farms operate more than 70% of the world's farmland.

So “600 million farms” is a terrible shortcut for calculating the addressable market for a $100,000 sensor-and-automation system.

The economics split AgriTech into very different customer groups. Large farms can buy sophisticated machinery, robotics and premium software. Tiny farms need technologies with radically lower costs, often distributed through smartphones, cooperatives, contractors or shared services.

A company can therefore address a huge share of agricultural production without selling to anything close to a majority of farmers.

Farm group	Share/adoption indicator	What it means for AgriTech
Global farms	>608M	Huge theoretical user base
Farms under 2 hectares	~84% of farms	Most farms cannot support expensive technology
Land operated by farms under 2 hectares	~12%	Farm count badly overstates their commercial weight
Largest 1% of global farms	>70% of farmland	High-value technology demand is highly concentrated
Large U.S. crop farms using autosteer	70%	Mature precision technology can reach mainstream adoption
Midsize U.S. crop farms using autosteer	52%	Economics still work for many midscale operators
Small U.S. farms using autosteer	9%	Equipment economics deteriorate sharply at small scale

Is AgriTech still mostly a North American market?

AgriTech revenue remains heavily concentrated in North America today, even though Asia has a far larger farming population and probably more room for future adoption.

Grand View Research estimates North America represented 43.5% of the smart-agriculture market in 2024. In its newer precision-farming analysis, North America accounted for 36.1% of 2025 revenue. The region also represented 38.1% of farm-management software.

Ken Research reaches a similar conclusion from another methodology. Its $31 billion AgriTech estimate for 2025 breaks down into roughly $11 billion for North America, $8 billion for Europe, $8 billion for Asia-Pacific, $3 billion for Latin America and $1 billion for the Middle East and Africa.

That distribution looks strange until farm economics are considered.

North America combines very large farms, expensive labor, advanced machinery fleets, strong dealer networks and enough purchasing power to support high-value technology. A relatively small number of farms can therefore generate a large amount of AgriTech revenue.

Asia-Pacific has far more farms but much lower technology spending per farm. Its opportunity will often depend on different products: smaller machines, affordable sensors, mobile software, drone services, financing and shared equipment.

So the next big AgriTech market does not necessarily look like another American one.

Did AgriTech investment recover after the venture crash?

AgriTech funding has stopped collapsing and money is moving back toward farm technology, biology and deep tech, but the 2021 financing frenzy has not returned.

AgFunder recorded $51.7 billion of global agrifoodtech startup investment in 2021. By 2023, funding had fallen to $15.6 billion, roughly 70% below the peak.

The market then stabilized.

Agrifoodtech startups raised about $16 billion in 2024. The latest AgFunder report puts 2025 funding at $16.2 billion, roughly flat year over year.

The more interesting change happened underneath the total.

Upstream startups working on farms, food production and biological systems attracted $9 billion in 2025, 7% more than a year earlier. Deal count fell 12%.

Investors therefore put more money into fewer upstream companies.

That fits what we see elsewhere in AgriTech these days. The market has become much less interested in funding a vague promise to “digitize agriculture.” Robotics, biological science, automation and products with visible unit economics have a much easier story to tell.

The funding recovery is modest, but the mix is healthier than during the growth-at-any-cost period.

Period	Global agrifoodtech startup funding	What was happening
2021	$51.7B	Venture boom peak
2022	~$30B	Sharp reset began
2023	$15.6B	Funding fell another 49%
2024	~$16B	Market broadly stabilized
2025	$16.2B	Overall funding stayed roughly flat
2025 upstream funding	$9B	Farm, production and biological tech rose 7%
2025 upstream deal count	Down 12%	Capital concentrated into fewer companies

Is AI finally creating real AgriTech revenue?

Agricultural AI is starting to create measurable revenue when the software controls a valuable physical task, and targeted spraying is currently one of the clearest examples.

John Deere's See & Spray system covered more than five million acres during the 2025 growing season.

Deere reported that customers reduced non-residual herbicide use by nearly 50% on average and avoided almost 31 million gallons of herbicide mix. The system uses cameras and onboard computing to identify weeds and trigger individual spray nozzles while the machine moves through the field.

The more interesting development is how Deere charges for it.

The company introduced an Application Savings Guarantee under which farmers pay a per-acre technology fee when See & Spray generates measurable savings. The pricing was set at $1 per fallow acre or $5 per in-crop acre under the program, and Deere has since added an annual licensing option for high-use operations.

This begins to look much more like technology revenue layered onto agricultural machinery.

AGCO is moving along the same path with PTx, which combines retrofit precision equipment, connectivity, automation and FarmENGAGE software. As seen earlier, AGCO wants the precision-agriculture operation to reach $2 billion of annual revenue by 2029.

AI is much easier to monetize on a farm when we can point to the chemical, labor, fuel or machine hours it saved. Generic agricultural AI advice has a much harder time proving the same value.

Which AgriTech businesses are strongest right now?

Precision equipment, targeted application, retrofit automation, farm software, irrigation technology and selected biological products currently have the strongest commercial foundations inside AgriTech.

The common thread is pretty simple: economics.

Autosteering saves operator effort and reduces overlap. Variable-rate application can reduce unnecessary input use. Targeted spraying can cut chemical consumption. Irrigation control can reduce water and pumping costs. Farm-management software becomes useful when it changes planning, equipment utilization or input decisions. Robotics becomes attractive where labor is expensive or difficult to find.

These categories already have meaningful revenue, established customers and products working in ordinary agricultural operations.

That sets them apart from the weakest part of the previous AgriTech boom. Several heavily financed vertical-farming businesses needed enormous amounts of capital before they could produce anything, then had to compete with crops grown under much cheaper conditions.

The market now rewards technologies that can explain their payback in farm-level terms.

That may sound less futuristic than building skyscrapers full of lettuce. Commercially, it is much more convincing.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AgriTech market report.

How fast is the real AgriTech market growing?

A reasonable growth rate for core AgriTech is currently around the low double digits, while individual software, drone and automation categories can grow much faster.

The latest broad forecasts cluster surprisingly well once we use comparable definitions.

Ken Research expects its $31 billion market to reach $61 billion by 2031, equivalent to 11.94% annual growth. The Business Research Company forecasts an 11.1% CAGR through 2030. Grand View Research expects smart agriculture to grow 14.6% annually through 2033.

Inside the market, the spread is much wider. Precision farming is forecast at 12.7%. Farm-management software is forecast at 20.1%. Smaller automation and drone categories often carry forecasts in the high teens.

That mix makes sense.

A $5 billion software category can double much faster than mature agricultural machinery. As software and autonomy become a larger part of AgriTech, they can pull the whole market's growth rate upward.

We would still be cautious with forecasts above 20% for the entire industry. AgriTech sells into an industry with volatile commodity prices, tight margins and long machinery replacement cycles. Farmers do not replace a $500,000 machine because a market report predicts a 20% CAGR.

A roughly 10–14% long-term growth range fits today's evidence much better.

Can AgriTech realistically become a $100 billion market?

A $100 billion core AgriTech market is realistic, but it is more likely to be a next-decade milestone than an immediate one.

Start with $35 billion as a midpoint of our current range.

At 10% annual growth, the market reaches about $91 billion after ten years. At 12%, it reaches roughly $109 billion. At 14%, it approaches $130 billion.

We therefore do not need an extraordinary technological revolution to get to $100 billion. Sustained low-double-digit growth is enough.

Several forces could support it. Precision technology still has room to move beyond large North American farms. Retrofit systems can bring automation to machinery already in use. Agricultural software remains small beside hardware. AI is creating new usage-based revenue models. Labor constraints make autonomy more valuable, while water and chemical costs strengthen the economics of precision application.

There are also hard limits.

Most of the world's farms are tiny. Agricultural purchasing power varies enormously by region. Hardware takes time to replace. A product that promises a 5% improvement may still lose to a farmer simply keeping the existing machine for another five years.

So $100 billion is a credible destination. The path there will probably be slower and more uneven than the most aggressive AgriTech forecasts suggest.

If you want more recent data on this point, please see our latest AgriTech market report.

How big is the AgriTech market really?

AgriTech is currently best understood as a roughly $30–40 billion core market, with a broader definition reaching around $45–60 billion once technologies such as agricultural biologicals are included.

That range fits the commercial evidence better than either extreme.

A $10 billion estimate leaves out too much technology that is already producing real revenue. Precision farming alone is now around $15–17 billion, farm-management software adds roughly $5 billion, and meaningful businesses also exist in drones, irrigation, livestock technology, automation and controlled environments.

At the other end, claims that AgriTech is already a $100 billion-plus industry usually start counting entire machinery, seed, pesticide, greenhouse or indoor-farming markets. Those businesses certainly use technology, but including all of their revenue gives us a measure of modern agriculture rather than a useful AgriTech market.

The industry is also much more mature than the startup narrative sometimes suggests. Seventy percent of large U.S. crop farms already use autosteering. Agricultural AI systems are operating across millions of acres. AGCO is building toward billions of dollars in precision-agriculture revenue. Upstream agrifoodtech companies attracted $9 billion of venture funding last year even after the sector's brutal reset.

For now, roughly $30–40 billion is the number we would use for core AgriTech.

The more interesting story is what happens next. AgriTech is gradually shifting from selling farmers interesting technology to selling measurable savings in labor, chemicals, water, fuel and machine time. If that continues, getting from tens of billions to $100 billion becomes much easier to believe.