USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech

American farmers and ranchers are facing increasing pressures and need confidence that new technologies will deliver tangible value on the ground—whether through lower input costs, reduced labor demands, or greater overall efficiency.

The USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech is designed to meet that need. The initiative has been designed to rigorously test and validate both existing and emerging tools under real U.S. farming conditions, ultimately providing farmers, ranchers, and producers with trusted, practical insights that they can rely on when making technology investment decisions.

The USDA National Proving Grounds Network for AgTech will help ag‑tech companies—large and small—focus their efforts on the real‑world needs of U.S. farmers and ranchers. The Network will also help producers cut input costs, reduce risk, boost productivity, and access trusted, data‑driven insights on precision agriculture tools. By leveraging the expertise of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and our nation’s Land‑Grant Universities, the Network will accelerate the development of next‑generation technologies and give farmers the confidence they need to adopt the innovations shaping the digital agriculture era.

Farmers and ranchers will benefit from the Network through access to results generated at USDA and university research sites, delivered through dashboards, field days, and demonstration events. These efforts are designed to ensure broad access across regions and production systems, but the specifics are still being developed. We will, as always, seek to communicate with farmers and ranchers in ways that work best for them.

Agricultural technology companies will be invited and encouraged to enroll commercial and pre-commercial products for rigorous testing and evaluation under real-world production conditions. Companies with pre-commercial entries may also engage with testing under non-disclosure terms and work with research partners (USDA, Land Grants, others) to refine and improve their technologies based on field performance.

The Grand Farm team will serve as the focal point for technology company engagement and nominal entry fees may be used to help offset the cost of testing, analysis, and reporting.

The Network will implement a structured process that includes technology intake, readiness review, standardized field testing, and performance evaluation. This approach ensures that all technologies are assessed consistently and transparently across diverse production environments. While USDA will provide the testing and certify the results, we will partner with the Grand Farm to facilitate much of the logistics of the network.

Historically, visual ratings have been used to assess weed control performance in field scale trials and will continue to serve as benchmark data in the early stages of the USDA National Proving Ground.

At the same time, artificial intelligence will play a central role. The initial program will focus on weeds, using computer vision and machine learning to quantify weed density and coverage before and after precision technologies are applied, providing a more objective and scalable evaluation.

As the Network expands to other areas such as disease, animal production, and water management, appropriate evaluation systems will be developed using AI and other domain specific approaches.

Grand Farm will serve as the National Program Manager, while working with ARS and land-grant universities across the country as core research and testing partners to ensure that USDA is meeting the needs of all American farmers.

Yes, Land Grant Extension Specialists will participate by applying standardized visual rating approaches throughout the pilot and into future phases. In addition, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture NIFA is exploring opportunities to incorporate the Network into existing funding programs for the FY2027 cycle. Moreover, many Land Grants now have very advanced digital ag and technology laboratories and capabilities, we expect that many companies will partner with these universities to help with development until they are ready for commercialization.

The network will essentially create focus and attention to new and emerging technologies that support U.S. agriculture. This, we believe, will:

1. energize the private sector with support as they address a national agricultural priority,
2. align the public sector on partnering with tech companies and innovators of types; and
3. focus the full AgTech Ecosystem on transformational goals to benefit U.S. farmers and ranchers, and U.S. agricultural competitiveness broadly.