As farm machinery costs increase far beyond the rate of inflation, making a new machine pencil out may require some creative thinking about its potential uses and how farm operational expenses will change in the next decade.

Recent generations of ag technology have seen new features undercut by rising reliability problems, says Clay Mitchell, co-founder and managing director of Silicon Valley-based Fall Line Capital, a farmland and venture investment firm. Mitchell says the shift to autonomy will accelerate reliability problems beyond anything we’ve seen before.

Since the early days of no-till, a practice that began commercially in the U.S. in 1962, this group of farmers has embraced and found success with precision agriculture.