Technology Revolution in Agriculture Needs Investment in Humans as Well as Machines
Key Findings:
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Interest in agricultural technology is here. Among 10,856 respondents from Central Valley agricultural communities, 16.5% expressed interest in agtech training, more than three times those interested in general agriculture programs.
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The challenge is not motivation; it is access. The study says childcare, internet connectivity and flexible scheduling as core constraints on participation in technical education..
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Agtech could create a new path for workers often missed by traditional higher education. Interest was especially strong among men ages 25 to 34 with a middle-school education, while respondents with three or more dependents had more than twice the odds of expressing interest in agtech than those without children.
Amid concerns that advances in agricultural technology could spell doom for the farmworker economy, researchers have found the opposite may be true: adopting new technology requires humans as much as tools and can provide greater opportunities for people.
In a paper published by international journal Agricultural Systems, the UC Merced-led team found high interest among the farm workforce in agricultural technologytraining, particularly among respondents aged 25-34 with a middle-school education. Significant barriers remain, including available childcare, internet access and inflexible training opportunities.
"Agriculture is undergoing a major technological transition, and we often assume that new technology will replace labor," said lead author Kimberly Gibson, a UC Merced postdoctoral researcher in climate smart agriculture and innovation. "Our findings show this transition can go another way. Technology can replace people, or it can open doors of opportunity for them."
The team studied responses from 10,856 people in California's Central Valley. Of those, only 5.3% expressed an interest in general agriculture training programs, while 16.5% were interested in learning more about agricultural technology.
"Our data shows real interest, within agricultural communities, in becoming the people who operate, maintain and improve these technologies," Gibson said. "What stands in their way is often access to childcare, internet and flexible training programs."
Respondents with children were less than half as likely to respond that they were interested in agtech training than their childless counterparts. Respondents who said childcare would affect their ability to return to school had 5.97 times higher odds of expressing interest in further education, making childcare the strongest predictor identified in the analysis.
Childcare may be as important to workforce development as broadband or transportation, the study found. And the costs of training, not a lack of interest, limitsparticipation.
"The future of agriculture is not simply about putting more technology in the field," said co-author Joshua Viers, associate vice chancellor of interdisciplinary research andstrategic initiatives and a civil and environmental engineering professor at UC Merced. "It is about investing in the people who understand those fields."
Respondents indicated they would need training outside of typical work hours, highlighting the need for programs to be flexible.
Tarmworker communities can drive agricultural technology adoption when structural barriers to training are addressed, the researchers wrote. That supports UC Merced's longstanding efforts in agricultural innovation that focus on workforce development, the environment and the regional economy.
"The results offer a roadmap for inclusive digitalization that treats workforce development infrastructure as integral to agricultural systems design," they wrote.
Some of that work is underway, with the development of the Farms Food Future Ag Systems certificate program. Seven regional community colleges in the Central Valley began offering the program in 2024. It includes training in digital literacy, equipment operation and crop production systems, as well as interpersonal skills and technical writing.
"This survey confirms a reality agriculture has too often overlooked: Farmworkers are its longest-standing practitioners and best-positioned transition partners," said Karen Aceves, founder and CEO of Arken Strategies and a co-author of the paper. That insight helped shape AgTEC, a competency-based program now serving more than 1,000 students across the Central Valley.
"By recognizing the expertise farmworkers already hold and adding the technical skills, tools and agency to advance, we are preparing them to lead agriculture'stransformation as full partners in its future," Aceves said.
Leigh Bernacchi, director of ag innovation at Merced College, formerly served as executive director of VISTA F3 at UC Merced and also is a co-author of the study.
"F3 brought together community colleges and UC Merced to tackle one of the biggest problems in agriculture: labor. The question is really about the retention of agricultural experts and how we can use technology intentionally," she said. That partnership has continued through California Jobs First funding for the Merced AgTechAlliance to create workforce development programs that serve diverse students in agtech. "We learned from this research that agtech adoption can be accelerated by investing in the people to run the robots, drones and sensors, especially if they already understand the complexities of agriculture."
Investments such as these in farmworker education should be seen not as charitable interventions but as strategic investments in retaining the agronomic expertise that agricultural technology systems require to function effectively, the researchers said.
"If we want agricultural innovation to succeed at scale, workforce development has to be treated as part of the technology infrastructure itself," Viers said. "That means building training around the realities of working families in our Valley communities."