Artificial intelligence is reshaping American food and agriculture, helping researchers, farmers, and food companies improve efficiency, strengthen resilience, conserve resources, and deliver a safer food supply. Yet federal policy is not keeping pace, according to data released by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology (CAST).
"Artificial intelligence has advanced so fast that it's not really just a research tool anymore; it's embedded in agricultural practice now," says Alex Thomasson, professor and director of the Agricultural Autonomy Institute at Mississippi State University. "From autonomous weed spraying to AI-assisted seed selection to real-time food safety inspection on processing lines, the technology is already changing how farmers work, how food moves through the system, and what we expect from that system. The policy conversation needs to catch up."
Key takeaways:
- AI is no longer a future promise: it is in active use across crop production, animal agriculture, and food supply chains, creating benefits for farmers and consumers, but also creating new policy questions.
- AI is evolving from a data analysis tool to a system that takes physical action, with autonomous machinery and robotics increasingly moving from demonstration to commercial deployment.
- Data quantity and quality are foundational to AI performance, making rural data infrastructure a critical policy priority.
- AI is being applied across every segment of the food system, from genetic seed selection to optical food safety inspection.
- Federal policy decisions on data centers, rural broadband, data ownership, and workforce development play a role in how AI benefits American agriculture and whether rural communities capture the economic gains of AI locally.
"CAST exists to translate agricultural science into policy-relevant guidance, and AI in agriculture is exactly the kind of complex, fast-moving topic where evidence-based analysis matters most," says Chris Boomsma, executive director of CAST. "This brief gives Congress and federal agencies the scientific foundation they need to make smart decisions right now, not after the technology has outpaced the regulatory environment entirely."
