Farmers are facing increased pressure; CNH says robotics can help

2026 has been a tumultuous year for American farmers. Global trade wars are causing farmers’ supplies to become increasingly expensive, while the prices of many crops have fallen. At the same time, changing weather conditions make it increasingly difficult to obtain a good harvest. These pressures mean we need a change in the way we farm, and robotics could be the answer.

Luca Ferrari, senior manager of robotics, a breakthrough technology at CNH Industrial, said labor availability, costs, productivity and efficiency are common concerns of the company’s customers.

“Our users need to do more with fewer resources. They want something, and we see this with robotics but not only, that solves a real problem, that is easy to use and that can create value,” he said The robot report. “The availability of labor is one of the main challenges that our farmers and growers are facing, especially during some critical operations such as planting, spraying and even harvesting.”

“They don’t adopt technology just because it’s fancy. They adopt technology because it really solves a problem and shows that it can improve the value of operations year after year,” Ferrari continued.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence mean that robots are ready to take a step forward

Most agricultural businesses already use some form of advanced technology, including autonomy. Now, Ferrari said, they are becoming increasingly connected and intelligent.

“We’re seeing a shift to agent-based systems. ‘Agentic,’ to me, is not an AI agent, but agentic means we’re moving away from a paradigm where robotics and automation don’t just assist the operator with individual tasks in an operation,” Ferrari said.

For him, a truly acting system is one that can perceive the environment, make decisions, and execute entire operations. Recent advances in sensing, computer vision, and artificial intelligence have enabled this shift. “We can really turn this data that we perceive from the environment into real operations,” Ferrari said.

At CNH, an example of this is FieldOps, offered through its subsidiary New Holland. FieldOps is a web and mobile farm management platform that offers real-time monitoring and remote display viewing.

“FieldOps is making a difference for our farmers too,” Ferrari said. “Instead of focusing on a single task and a single machine, several machines are linked together to allow them to focus on the bigger picture.”

“Data is the new oil”

With more advanced systems comes a lot of new data. If used correctly, this data could offer farmers a new way of understanding their operations.

“Data is the new oil,” Ferrari said. “It’s not just about the amount of data. We’re collecting a lot of data, including machine data, field data and agronomic data. The real challenge is getting value from that data. Every piece of data our customers collect can be turned into insights for them, for their field, for their operations and for their machines.”

CNH addresses this problem in a multi-level manner. Use machine-level data to continue improving the performance of individual machines, but also use this data to look at the entire operation and how machines work together.

“As we collect this data, season after season, we are also able to provide recommendations to our farmers and suggest improvements to the operation,” Ferrari explained. “In the long term, there is a path to be able to connect more and more data from third-party accessories. So, we can connect machine data, soil data, weather data, crop data, and through artificial intelligence, we can also provide more and more insights and suggestions on when to plant, when to spray, when to harvest and so on.”

This is why interoperability is very important in agriculture. “Farmers and growers also have different machines from different brands. To maximize the use of that date, if our robot is operating in a field where there is another machine, it is important to have interoperability,” Ferrari said.

Healthy soil is essential for sustainable production

As farmers seek to do more with less, the precision afforded by robotics becomes even more important. Precision agriculture, Ferrari said, can be critical to maintaining soil health.

“We have to consider that, for our farmer, the soil is really the most important asset. It’s really what fuels the future. I know it’s a cute slogan, but it’s the reality, because it’s the soil that produces the crop,” Ferrari said. “We need to find ways that allow us to protect the soil, measure it and improve it. Healthy soil is truly the best foundation for the production of the following year’s harvest.“

Weeding plays an important role in this. When farmers use robotics to spray precisely, less herbicide ends up in the soil. Ferrari says precision weeding can reduce herbicide use by up to 80%. New Holland also offers smaller, lighter systems, such as the R4 autonomous robot, that reduce soil compaction while working.

“[R4] it was designed from the ground up to be autonomous and AI-powered. It combinese.g GPS with lidar to perform navigationn,” said Ferrari. “It also has a camera to detect obstacles and perform field operations a lot high precision. It really is like that assist our farmers in highly repetitive operations, mainly focused ON vineyard AND orchard. His carry out, for example, mowing, tillage and spraying”.

Balance complexity with ease of use

So, what is holding back robotics in agriculture? Ferrari said there are some obvious environmental challenges.

“We operate in real fields and when operating in a real environment there is a lot of variability,” he noted. “There’s terrain that’s not always flat. There’s slope. There’s weather that can change between sunny, overcast and rainy. Then we have dust, different crop conditions. You can also have people and other equipment,” Ferrari said.

The environment requires complexity. A robot needs GPS, lidar, cameras, artificial intelligence, advanced software, and more to meet these environmental challenges. But that shouldn’t translate to user experience, he said.

“We really need to develop autonomous machines and technologies that can address all these different challenges, but at the same time develop something that is easy for our customers to use,” Ferrari said.

Editor’s Note: Field robotics is one of the topics covered during the RoboBusiness 2026 session, which will be held on October 20 and 21 in Santa Clara, California. Register now to participate.