WIQ Research · Report
The State of AI Adoption in Agribusiness IT
We pulled the credible surveys on enterprise AI adoption (McKinsey, Deloitte, Gartner, the US Census Bureau, and the industry-specific studies) and kept the numbers that describe IT organizations and the food and ag sector. No survey publishes an agribusiness IT cut, so we show both layers and label each stat with its actual sample.
IT is where enterprise AI adoption is happening fastest.
Organizations now regularly using AI in at least one business function, up from 78% a year earlier. About two thirds have not yet begun scaling it enterprise-wide.
McKinsey, The State of AI: Global Survey (2025) · 1,993 leaders, 105 countries
IT posted the largest six-month jump in AI use of any business function in McKinsey's mid-2024 waves. IT went from a support function to the fastest-adopting one.
McKinsey, The State of AI (2025 edition, Jul 2024 wave) · 1,491 leaders, 101 countries
Tech professionals who now use AI at work, with over 80% reporting productivity gains from it.
Google Cloud, DORA State of AI-assisted Software Development (2025) · ~5,000 tech professionals globally
Among the average US firms that use AI at all, IT is a top-three function for deployment, behind sales & marketing and strategy. The all-firm baseline is far lower than leader surveys suggest: 18% of US firms used AI in early 2026.
US Census Bureau, BTOS AI Supplement (2026) · Nationally representative sample of US firms
Your teams adopted AI before you rolled it out.
The strongest pattern in the 2024-2026 data is bottom-up adoption. Employees bring their own tools, build their own workflows, and IT finds out later. For an IT leader the question has shifted from whether to allow AI to whether you can see what is already running.
AI users who bring their own AI tools to work. Among knowledge workers overall, 75% already use generative AI on the job.
Microsoft + LinkedIn, Work Trend Index (2024) · 31,000 knowledge workers, 31 countries
Organizations that suspect or have evidence employees use prohibited public gen-AI tools. Gartner predicts over 40% of enterprises will suffer a shadow-AI security or compliance incident by 2030.
Gartner, GenAI blind spots survey (2025) · 302 cybersecurity leaders
US firms where workers use AI without any formal firm-level adoption. Census researchers describe it as grassroots adoption running ahead of official rollouts.
US Census Bureau, BTOS AI Supplement (2026) · Nationally representative sample of US firms
Average added breach cost when shadow AI is involved. One in five breached organizations reported a breach traced to unsanctioned AI.
IBM + Ponemon, Cost of a Data Breach (2025) · 600 breached organizations globally
Food and ag adopt last. That is the opportunity.
At the sector level, agriculture sits at the bottom of every AI adoption table. The processing and manufacturing side of the industry is investing anyway, which means the companies that move now set the pace for their category.
AI-use rate for agriculture (grouped with construction) among US businesses in 2023-24, the lowest of any sector. The information sector was at 18.1%.
US Census Bureau, BTOS working paper (2024) · ~164,500 US businesses
CPG and food & beverage manufacturers that have invested in AI/ML or plan to within 12 months. Across all manufacturing the figure is 95% over five years.
Rockwell Automation, State of Smart Manufacturing: CPG Edition (2025) · CPG/F&B subset of 1,560 manufacturers, 17 countries
Food retailers with an organization-wide generative AI solution for operations, versus their suppliers. The supplier side of the food chain is already moving.
FMI, The Food Retailing Industry Speaks (2026) · 70 US food retailers and wholesalers, 42,000+ stores
The budget line went from experiment to real money.
Enterprise spending on generative AI in 2025, a 3.2x jump over 2024's $11.5B. It started at $1.7B in 2023. (VC market-sizing estimate.)
Menlo Ventures, State of Generative AI in the Enterprise (2025) · 495 US enterprise AI decision-makers + market sizing
Departmental AI spend in 2025, up 4.1x in a year. Coding tools took $4.0B of it; IT operations was next at $700M. IT owns the two biggest line items.
Menlo Ventures, State of Generative AI in the Enterprise (2025) · 495 US enterprise AI decision-makers + market sizing
Leaders expecting to increase overall AI spending in the next fiscal year.
Deloitte, State of Generative AI in the Enterprise, Wave 4 (2025) · 2,773 director-to-C-suite leaders, 14 countries
Agents arrived faster than the governance for them.
Large US organizations with at least some AI agents deployed, up from 11% just two quarters earlier.
KPMG, AI Quarterly Pulse Q3 (2025) · 130 US C-suite leaders, $1B+ revenue
Organizations at least experimenting with AI agents, versus those scaling an agentic system anywhere. Experimentation is everywhere; production is rare.
McKinsey, The State of AI: Global Survey (2025) · 1,993 leaders, 105 countries
Agentic-AI users reporting significant ROI from it so far, even though 57% of organizations already use agentic AI. (EMEA sample.)
Deloitte, AI ROI study (2025) · 1,854 senior executives, 14 EMEA countries
Share of agentic AI projects Gartner predicts will be canceled by the end of 2027, on escalating costs, unclear business value, and inadequate risk controls. Picking the right processes to automate is the difference.
Gartner, agentic AI prediction (2025) · Analyst prediction
What stalls the rollout.
The consistent finding across surveys: the technology is not the bottleneck. Knowing which workflows to automate, trusting the output, and governing what teams build is.
Leaders who say fully implementing an AI governance strategy will take more than a year.
Deloitte, State of Generative AI in the Enterprise, Wave 4 (2025) · 2,773 director-to-C-suite leaders
Share of their GenAI experiments that more than two thirds of leaders expect to reach full scale within 3 to 6 months. Most pilots stay pilots.
Deloitte, State of Generative AI in the Enterprise, Wave 4 (2025) · 2,773 director-to-C-suite leaders
Tech professionals with little or no trust in AI-generated code, at the same time as 90% adoption. Teams use what they don't fully trust, which makes visibility into real usage an IT problem.
Google Cloud, DORA State of AI-assisted Software Development (2025) · ~5,000 tech professionals globally
Organizations that have deployed more than 100 AI use cases, versus those saying the efforts drive meaningful business outcomes. Volume without process understanding is the defining failure mode.
ServiceNow + Oxford Economics, Enterprise AI Maturity Index (2025) · ~4,500 executives worldwide
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