From soil to sky, the agricultural industry has largely embraced the digital revolution.

Ag companies have integrated drones, machine learning, AI, and automation into their everyday operations, all with the aim of helping farmers save time, money, and labor.

Look up: Soon, you may be able to add satellites to the list. John Deere, which has previously debuted tech like self-driving tractors, crop-spraying drones, and weed-identifying sprayers, said in January that it was “finalizing a satellite partner” in an effort to create geospatial maps to help analyze crop growth and bring connectivity to remote and rural farmers.

• The push to connect farmers comes as Deere looks to digitize its revenue sources—last year, it set a goal to get 10% of its revenue from software subscription fees by 2030.
• The company currently offers its customers free connectivity services through its JDLink platform. Deere spokesperson Sara Fazli said in an email that it’s “still working through the details of what SatCom-enabled connectivity will look like.”

Look ahead: As farm equipment becomes smarter—decked out with sensors and layered with AI—connectivity will become more important to growing operations, Scott Duncan, partner and head of Americas Agribusiness practice at Bain & Company, told us.

In 2020, McKinsey estimated that only 25% of American farms had any sort of connected equipment or devices in their operations, and that was before the telcos shut down many of the networks such equipment ran on in late 2022. Keep reading about Deere’s connected-crop efforts.—JM

Starbucks has long had a large and loyal fan base, from PSL enthusiasts to secret-menu insiders. In November 2022, the company told investors that the Starbucks Rewards loyalty program had grown 16% in the last quarter alone, ballooning to 28.7 million active members in the United States.

• But the coffee giant is taking loyalty a step further: In December, it began ushering eager testers into the beta version of a Web3 rewards experience called Starbucks Odyssey, which will integrate NFTs into the brand’s loyalty offerings.

Zoom in: Starbucks, as one of the first big brands to make a decisive move toward leveraging blockchain for loyalty, faces the problem of winning over both Web3 experts and a public whose interest in NFTs is still quite low. And the Odyssey beta, which is serving as a testing ground for the brand, highlights both the challenges and opportunities of being a first mover.

Read the full story in Retail Brew here.—MA

Jurassic Park may be an undisputed classic of a movie, but there’s a little more controversy when it comes to bringing its premise to the real world.

Last week, we asked all of you to weigh in on de-extinction, a futuristic-sounding topic made much less theoretical by advancements in synthetic biology, well-preserved DNA, and a startup named Colossal.

Our question: Do you think species de-extinction is a good idea? Here’s what more than 2,600 of you had to say:

• Almost half (48%) said thanks but no thanks to the idea of de-extinction.
• Just over one-third (34%) of respondents said yes, it’s a good idea to try and bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth.
• The remaining 18% of respondents said they’re not sure where they stand on this issue.

Why we asked: Colossal, the same company that announced plans to bring back the woolly mammoth in 2021 and the thylacine in 2022 said last week that it’s now attempting to de-extinct the dodo bird as well. The company also said last week that it had raised another $150 million, officially making it a unicorn.

If you want to read more, we went deep on Colossal’s plans back when it first announced its woolly mammoth moonshot.

This week’s poll: Do you own any sort of electric micromobility vehicle (e.g., an electric scooter, an e-bike)?

Yes
No
No, but I’m thinking about buying one

Stat: Amazon, Meta, Alphabet, and Microsoft disclosed more than $10 billion in combined costs related to their recent layoff and restructuring announcements, per the Financial Times.

Quote: “It’s a new day in search, it’s a new paradigm for search, rapid innovation is going to come.”—Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at yesterday’s event announcing its new, OpenAI-powered Bing search engine

Read: Apple phones and watches with crash detection keep mistakenly calling 911.

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Catch up on the top Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Amid wave of layoffs, some tech giants are elevating AI
• The FAA could require some airlines to upgrade to 5G-friendly altimeters
• How connectivity giants are embracing the space race