While relationships remain the foundation of the farmer business ecosystem, technology is brining a new structure to how everyday business is done.
“You have to have the relationship, maybe to start, but if it is inconvenient, you will lose business,” says Jake Jorandstaad co-founder of Bushel. “If you still only send paper invoices in the mail, and you don’t accept an online payment, you’re in trouble. You’re literally making it inconvenient for the 35-year-old who’s about to be your biggest customer in the next ten years to do business with you.”
Joranstaad highlights this as a takeaway from the latest State of Farm Report published by Bushel. Started in 2018, the goal of the survey is to answer questions about farmer tech adoption, which provides takeaways not only for technology but also payments and business operations.
This year’s findings are from over 1,300 respondents, and of which 59% of respondents farm more than 500 acres.
To support the importance of ease of doing business, the study found more are shifting to digital options. Only 39% of farmers prefer submitting grain offers in person, and 34% prefer ordering inputs face-to-face.
“Five years ago it was like most farmers didn’t really use software in the farm in their mind,” he says. Now, per Bushel’s survey, on average a farmer uses three software programs in their farm business.
In each year, the younger demographic shows a stronger use of technology in general. Joranstaad says with successful adoption over time, the demographics are shifting.
“50 is the new 40. 50 is the age range that tips the scale. If you’re 50 or younger, you are very much interested in adoption of technology on your operation. There’s very little resistance anymore in that range. And of course, more and more of those folks are also running the operations,” he says.
This underscores the need for businesses who serve farmers to outfit their operations for the future.
For example, 61% of farmers under 40 prefer mobile apps for payments and fund transfers.
And record-keeping has seen a jump in digitization: in two years, the use of pen and paper dropped from 65% to 21%. From the 2025 survey, spreadsheets are used by 39% of respondents—in 2024 it was 61%.
One of the next leap frog’s in tech use will be software and apps for decision making beyond just simple record keeping.
Per this report, farmers under the age of 50 value software to help with improved decision making at a higher rate. And with the data spliced by size of operation, one-third of farms more than 10,000 acres use software for improved decision making.
The trends in the State of the Farm Report have been used by Bushel with production introductions, such as Bushel Wallet.
“We expected the farmer to want to start doing business with their farm operation, like they can at home,” Joranstaad says, referring to Venmo and Paypal services. “Now our report shows the 40 year olds and under expect to be able to use technology and tools to do payments and handle their business. Even though 80% of people get paper checks, but the preference to get paper checks is less than half. And so we’ve got to work on that as an industry.”
He says in the past 18 months, Bushel has seen a growth in farmers enrolling for direct deposit online. Earlier this year, the company added a feature to Bushel Wallet where the online account can earn interest—right now around 3%.
“It’s been one of the things we were working on–how can we make a compelling place for your money to initially get it quickly so you can manage it, move it to your different banks, and now earn almost 3.5% interest,” Joranstaad says.
Other takeaways:
- Farmer payments: Among farmers under 50, a 30% gap exists between how they are paid and how they prefer to be paid when it comes to paper checks.
- Purchasing trends: 70% of farmers cite using a credit card at least one time per month; yet only 8% of farmers prefer the use of a credit card. 49% of respondents said that their ag retailers had some sort of policy regarding using credit cards. 40% of respondents say retailers are passing those fees onto the farmers to help recoup those costs.
- Financial management: 32% are currently using apps or digital tools from their bank for financial management for their farm.
- Digital payments: Up to 53% of respondents use Venmo and up to 46% use PayPal, which provide baseline experiences with digital payment processors for sending or receiving money.
- Ordering inputs: 34% of respondents think the process of ordering inputs via their ag retailer could be improved—with the top examples being price information, easier access to quotes, and input comparison tools.
