Reviewed August 2026 against USDA Economic Research Service, the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), and the CropLife/Purdue Precision Agriculture Adoption Survey.

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Agriculture technology today means precision equipment, satellite and sensor data, and increasingly electrified machinery running on stable mineral supply chains. In the United States, 27% of farms had adopted some form of precision agriculture technology as of 2023, per USDA’s Economic Research Service. In the United Kingdom, the Country Land and Business Association put precision technology use among farmers at 60% in 2023. This article answers, with sourced figures, how technology is actually used in agriculture across the US, UK and Australia — and where a lesser-known piece of the supply chain, Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s lithium extraction process, fits into the equipment and battery systems that power that technology.

Table of Contents

1. How Widely Is Technology Used in Agriculture? The Adoption Numbers
2. Core Agriculture Technologies in Use Today
3. Australian Agriculture Technology: What ABARES Does and Doesn’t Publish
4. Technology in Food Production: Irrigation and Yield Evidence
5. Why Lithium Extraction Technology Matters to Farm Equipment
6. Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Lithium Extraction Process
7. Comparison: Oak Ridge Process vs. Conventional Brine Extraction
8. Satellite-Based Mineral Detection for Lithium and Critical Minerals
9. Calculator: Drip Irrigation Water and Yield Savings
10. Barriers to Adoption: Cost, Farm Size, and Connectivity
11. Governance and Land-Use Considerations
12. FAQs
13. Conclusion: Checking the Numbers Yourself

How Widely Is Technology Used in Agriculture? The Adoption Numbers

The honest starting point for “how is technology used in agriculture” is that adoption is uneven and depends heavily on farm size. USDA’s Economic Research Service reported that 27% of US farms had adopted precision agriculture technology as of 2023 (USDA ERS, Precision Agriculture in the US). That national figure masks a sharp size split: among large-scale US crop farms, 68% used yield monitors, yield maps, or soil maps in 2023, compared with just 13% of small crop farms, according to a separate USDA ERS chart (USDA ERS Chart of Note, 2023).

In the United Kingdom, the Country Land and Business Association reported that 60% of farmers were using some form of precision agriculture technology as of 2023 — though this is an industry-association estimate, not a Defra official statistic, and no equivalent government-published UK adoption rate is available at the time of writing (CLA, Agriculture’s Digitalisation Journey). For readers who need an official UK government figure, Defra publishes annual farming statistics and programme updates at gov.uk under the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs — check there for the current release before citing a UK adoption rate in a report or grant application.

On the equipment side specifically, adoption of newer sensing technologies remains low even where broader precision agriculture use is climbing. Machine vision weed detection on sprayers — a technology that identifies and targets individual weeds rather than blanket-spraying a field — sits at just 4% current adoption among farmers and dealers surveyed, per the 2025 CropLife/Purdue Precision Agriculture Dealership Survey (CropLife/Purdue Precision Ag Adoption Survey, 2025). That gap between headline adoption (27% in the US) and adoption of any single new tool (4% for machine vision spraying) is the clearest evidence that “agriculture technology” is not one thing — it’s dozens of separate tools with very different uptake curves, and a reader evaluating any single technology should look up its own adoption figure rather than assume the 27% headline applies to it.

Core Agriculture Technologies in Use Today

“Agriculture technology in food” production spans several distinct categories. Each has a different maturity level and a different evidence base:

• Yield monitoring and mapping: GPS-linked sensors on combines record yield variation across a field in real time, producing maps used for input planning the following season. USDA ERS puts adoption at 68% on large US crop farms versus 13% on small ones (2023 data, cited above).
• Precision irrigation: Subsurface drip irrigation and sensor-scheduled watering, covered in depth in the next section with USDA Agricultural Research Service trial results.
• Machine vision and spot-spray weed control: Cameras and AI models identify weeds for targeted herbicide application rather than field-wide spraying. Adoption stood at 4% as of the 2025 CropLife/Purdue survey.
• Satellite and remote-sensing monitoring: Multispectral imagery tracks crop health, moisture stress, and — relevant to the mineral-supply side of this article — mineral prospectivity on land adjoining farms and forests.
• Electrified and battery-powered equipment: Tractors, pumps, sensors, and cold-chain units increasingly depend on lithium-ion battery supply, which is where the mineral extraction technology covered later in this article becomes directly relevant to farm operating costs.
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Australian Agriculture Technology: What ABARES Does and Doesn’t Publish

For “australian agriculture technology,” the honest answer is that a detailed, US-NASS-style breakdown by farm type and technology category is not available from ABARES (the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences) in the sources reviewed for this article. This is a genuine gap, not an oversight: ABARES publishes farm survey data on production, income, and broad technology investment, but a granular adoption rate comparable to USDA’s 68%-large-farm / 13%-small-farm split has not been located. Readers needing current Australian figures should check ABARES’s own farm survey releases directly, as these are the primary source for Australian farm-level technology statistics and are updated on ABARES’s own publication schedule.

What can be said with the US and UK data as reference points: Australian broadacre and horticultural operations use many of the same core technologies — yield mapping, variable-rate input application, and satellite-based crop and moisture monitoring — and Australia’s large average farm size relative to the US and UK tends to favour the same size-driven adoption pattern USDA documents (large operations adopting precision tools at far higher rates than small ones). That pattern is a reasonable expectation based on the US data, not a confirmed Australian statistic, and should be treated as such until an ABARES figure is available to confirm or contradict it.

Technology in Food Production: Irrigation and Yield Evidence

The clearest, most rigorously documented technology-to-food-output link comes from irrigation research. A USDA Agricultural Research Service study conducted over the 2023–2024 growing seasons found that subsurface drip irrigation combined with precision nitrogen management produced a 15.8% higher grain yield in maize compared with conventional irrigation and fertilisation, and a 5.2% higher grain yield in wheat under the same subsurface drip approach (USDA ARS study, PMC, 2023–2024). The same study measured a 55% reduction in irrigation system water use where subsurface drip replaced conventional systems.

Zooming out from that single study, a broader 2024 research synthesis combining USDA data with peer-reviewed studies found that precision agriculture adoption across farm operations generally delivers water savings in the 15–30% range (Frontiers in Plant Science, peer-reviewed synthesis, 2024). That range is wider than the 55% figure from the specific subsurface drip trial because it aggregates many different precision irrigation methods — sensor-scheduled sprinkler systems, deficit irrigation, and variable-rate systems alongside drip — rather than isolating the single best-performing method. When evaluating a water-savings claim, check whether it refers to one technology (like the 55% subsurface drip figure) or an aggregate across many technologies (like the 15–30% synthesis figure), since the two are not directly comparable.

These are the numbers that answer “how is technology used in agriculture” for food production specifically: it is used to cut water input by roughly half under the best-documented single system, while lifting yield per acre by mid-single digits to mid-teens depending on the crop. Readers modelling their own farm should treat the 15.8% maize and 5.2% wheat figures as trial results from a specific USDA ARS study period, not universal guarantees — soil type, climate, and baseline irrigation efficiency all affect the size of the gain on any individual field.

Why Lithium Extraction Technology Matters to Farm Equipment

Every category of “agriculture with technology” above — yield sensors, satellite receivers, variable-rate controllers, and increasingly the tractors and pumps themselves — runs on batteries, and an increasing share of those batteries are lithium-ion. Electrified equipment, remote soil sensors, off-grid irrigation pumps, and cold-chain storage units in areas without reliable grid power all depend on a stable lithium supply chain. When lithium supply is volatile, the input cost of that equipment and its replacement batteries becomes volatile too — which is why the mineral-extraction side of the supply chain, not just the sensors and software, belongs in a serious discussion of agriculture technology.

This is where Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s lithium extraction technology becomes relevant to farm operators, equipment manufacturers, and rural electrification planners, even though it is a mineral-processing innovation rather than a farm-floor tool.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Lithium Extraction Process

Oak Ridge’s process targets lithium recovery from brines and lithium-bearing clays using a selective, lower-energy method rather than the evaporation ponds or brute-force acid leaching used in conventional extraction. The design goals are recovery efficiency, reduced solvent volume, and solvent recycling — engineering choices aimed squarely at the three costs that make conventional lithium extraction environmentally contentious: water use, chemical waste, and land disturbance.

• Selective extraction: targets lithium compounds specifically rather than processing the full mineral matrix, reducing the volume of waste material generated per tonne of lithium recovered.
• Solvent recycling: recaptures and recirculates processing chemicals instead of discharging them, cutting both contamination risk and operating cost.
• Modular scale: the process can run in smaller units near extraction sites or in centralized facilities, rather than requiring one large fixed plant.
• Integration with existing supply chains: designed to slot into current mineral logistics rather than requiring a parallel infrastructure build-out.

For farm equipment manufacturers and rural electrification programmes, the practical upside is a steadier, potentially lower-cost lithium input for the batteries inside tractors, sensors, pumps, and storage units — the same equipment categories driving the adoption figures cited earlier in this article.

Comparison: Oak Ridge Process vs. Conventional Brine Extraction

The table below sets out the engineering trade-offs between the Oak Ridge approach and conventional brine/hard-rock lithium extraction, framed for readers assessing supply-chain risk to agricultural equipment sourcing.

Precise, third-party-audited figures for water use in litres per tonne and energy use in kWh per tonne for the Oak Ridge process specifically were not available in the sources reviewed for this article, so they are not stated here as numbers — treat any specific per-tonne figure you see elsewhere as a vendor claim to verify against an independent source before using it in planning or investment decisions.

Satellite-Based Mineral Detection for Lithium and Critical Minerals

Before any lithium extraction project — Oak Ridge’s process or otherwise — reaches the ground, exploration teams need to know where lithium-bearing clays and brines are concentrated. Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection uses multispectral remote sensing and AI-driven analytics to narrow large land tracts to the most viable prospects without ground disturbance, which matters directly to agricultural and forested land where physical drilling campaigns carry the highest opportunity cost.

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Calculator: Drip Irrigation Water and Yield Savings

Use the figures from the USDA Agricultural Research Service 2023–2024 study above to estimate what switching to subsurface drip irrigation could mean on your own acreage — enter your numbers below rather than relying on the study’s averages.

Assumptions: applies the USDA ARS 2023–2024 trial's measured 55% irrigation water reduction and crop-specific yield gains (maize 15.8%, wheat 5.2%) directly to your entered baseline. It does not account for soil type, climate, existing irrigation efficiency, or conversion/installation costs for subsurface drip infrastructure — treat the output as a planning estimate, not a guarantee.

Barriers to Adoption: Cost, Farm Size, and Connectivity

The adoption figures cited throughout this article point to consistent barriers rather than a single cause. USDA ERS's size split — 68% of large US crop farms versus 13% of small ones using yield monitors and maps in 2023 — indicates capital cost and the fixed cost of learning new systems fall disproportionately on smaller operations, since equipment and software costs don't scale down proportionally with acreage. The CLA's UK research similarly points to broadband access and farm income constraints as adoption barriers, not merely awareness or willingness (CLA, Agriculture's Digitalisation Journey).

For equipment specifically dependent on lithium battery supply — electric tractors, off-grid pumps, remote sensors — a second barrier layer applies: input cost volatility tied to lithium mineral supply. This is the direct link back to the extraction technology discussed earlier — a steadier, lower-waste lithium supply chain (whether from Oak Ridge's process or comparable methods) reduces one input-cost variable that currently sits on top of the capital-cost barrier USDA and the CLA both document.

Governance and Land-Use Considerations

Where lithium extraction sites sit near or within agricultural and forested land, governance practices affect both environmental outcomes and long-term land productivity:

• ✔ Environmental impact assessments: disclosed and reviewed before extraction begins, covering water quality, soil health, and biodiversity risk.
• ✔ Community engagement: local stakeholders included in planning and monitoring decisions.
• ✔ Ongoing monitoring: water, air, and ecosystem indicators tracked through the life of the project, not just at permitting.
• ✔ Land-use integration: extraction planning coordinated with existing agricultural and forestry land use to avoid habitat fragmentation.
• ✔ Reclamation planning built in from the start: a post-extraction return to productive land use, planned before extraction begins rather than after.

Farmonaut's responsible minerals initiative sourcing steps outline this kind of process for teams evaluating a mineral project against these governance criteria before committing capital.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

1. How is technology used in agriculture right now, in measurable terms?
By adoption rate: 27% of US farms used some precision agriculture technology as of 2023 (USDA ERS), rising to 68% among large-scale US crop farms specifically for yield monitors and maps, versus 13% on small farms. In the UK, the CLA put precision technology use at 60% of farmers in 2023. These are the most current published figures at review time; check the USDA and CLA links above directly for any later release.

2. What does "agriculture technology in food" actually cover?
Primarily precision irrigation, yield monitoring and mapping, machine vision weed detection, satellite crop and land monitoring, and — upstream of the farm — the mineral and battery supply chains that power electrified equipment. The irrigation category has the strongest documented food-output link: a USDA ARS trial over 2023–2024 measured a 15.8% maize yield gain and 5.2% wheat yield gain from subsurface drip irrigation with precision nitrogen management.

3. What is Australian agriculture technology adoption, specifically?
A detailed ABARES breakdown comparable to USDA's farm-size split was not available in the sources used for this review. Check ABARES's own farm survey publications directly for the current figures, and treat any claimed Australian adoption percentage you see elsewhere with the same scrutiny — verify against the primary ABARES release before citing it.

4. How does lithium extraction technology connect to farm equipment?
Electrified tractors, remote sensors, off-grid irrigation pumps, and cold-chain storage units run on lithium-ion batteries. A steadier, lower-waste lithium supply — such as the process developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory — reduces volatility in the input cost of that equipment, which sits alongside capital cost as a documented adoption barrier.

5. Can Farmonaut help identify lithium or other mineral deposits near agricultural land?
Yes — Farmonaut's satellite-based mineral detection platform uses multispectral remote sensing and AI analytics to identify prospective zones without ground disturbance. Submit a site through the mining site mapping portal or request a project quote directly.

Conclusion: Checking the Numbers Yourself

The figures in this article carry specific vintages and specific sources for a reason: adoption rates and yield studies move every year, and a number worth citing is a number you can re-check. For US adoption data, USDA NASS releases updated figures annually through QuickStats at quickstats.nass.usda.gov — search "precision agriculture adoption" filtered by year for anything newer than the 2023 figures used here. For UK figures, Defra's annual farming statistics and programme updates are published at gov.uk under the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. For dealer- and farmer-level US technology adoption trends, the CropLife/Purdue Precision Agriculture Dealership Survey is released annually, with its next update expected in 2026.

That refresh path — not any single percentage — is the durable part of this article. Whichever number you need next, from adoption rates to irrigation yield gains to lithium supply-chain reliability, the method is the same: identify the specific technology and farm size segment you're asking about, then go to the primary source rather than a rounded, decontextualized headline figure.

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