Nearly 50% of dealers responding to the 2025 Precision Farming Dealer Benchmark Survey said it’s very likely they’ll invest in autonomy over the next 2 years, while 25% said it’s somewhat likely, 16% somewhat unlikely and 8% very unlikely That’s up slightly compared to last year’s survey, when only 30% said very likely and 39% said somewhat likely.

How important are autonomous vehicles/robotics to increasing precision revenue in the next 3 years? 25% said very important, 33% somewhat important,16% neutral, 16% somewhat unimportant and 8% very unimportant.

Spud Armstrong, precision manager at Ag Technologies Inc. and New Holland Rochester, says his team had some success introducing autonomous technology to customers in 2024.

“We were working with cart automation and purchased a kit for demo in the fall,” Armstrong says. “We had some good luck with it, but the problem was, we had a kit running in the field and it broke down. We had to pull parts from the demo kit to keep that one going. So, we didn’t get to demo it throughout the season like we wanted to. But we did host a combine clinic and were able to do a demo during that. We had some good response from the customers. Another problem is, we’re going to have to get customers to update tractors and possibly combines (to implement the technology). And with the current ag economy, I don’t know if those guys will pick up on that. But we’re pushing into autonomy a little bit harder than we had up until this point.”

Dealers participating in the survey were asked how autonomous machinery will impact their dealership in the next 3 years. Here’s what they said:

“It depends on how you define autonomous. Every piece of equipment we sell to a row crop operation has autonomous functions today, operator still required. Full autonomous equipment (no operator required) is probably 10-20 years out from being mainstream.” 

“I believe we’ll see autonomous machines within 3 years. It was all everyone wanted to talk about 2 years ago, but most manufacturers have not actually offered their products for sale. I think we’ll see those products being released over the next 3 years.” 

“In the next 3 years, not significantly. We tend to be late to the current trends because most of our clients do not have enough acres to justify new autonomy investments yet. Also, with us not adequately collecting precision farming labor today, jumping deep into autonomy and trying to be a first-mover in our area means our lack of collecting PF labor just got a lot worse.” 

“Not hardly at all.” 

“It will be an important period for learning about autonomy and how it can be used in our area to show ROI to our customers.” 

“Very likely to become part of our product portfolio and be installed inside our customer base.” 

“Zero”

“It’s dependent on the size of the farm. Small equipment that is autonomous is needed for our area.”

“We represent one now, slow adoption in row crops. Slow growth area for us in the Midwest.”

“Minimal.”

We'll have more insights and a full breakdown of the 2025 Precision Farming Dealer Benchmark Survey in the upcoming winter edition of Precision Farming Dealer and on PrecisionFarmingDealer.com.