Oct 21, 2026 · 32 min · 9 segments
Robert Saik grew up on a mixed family farm, the grandson of Ukrainian farmer immigrants, and went on to build one of North America's largest agriculture consulting firms, lead a robotics company, and…
Robert SaikGuest
Eric JorgensonHost
So where does this convergence take us? What is the what is the sort of summary view that you have of the future of agriculture?
Well, you know, we talk a lot these days in the media about AI and robotics and stuff like that.
It's going to be a long time before we'll see the disintermediation of farmers based on AI and robotics.
And, you know, getting autonomous machines working in the field is not that difficult.
The problem is moving the vehicles between moving the robots between fields, because then you got insurance and regulation and all this kind of stuff.
But there is so much out of the control of an individual on a day to day basis, like I had my garden and I just harvested it the other day before the snow came.
Well, how do you deal with that? And the vagaries of weather and the vagaries of markets, like somebody wakes up in the politically, and all of a sudden the markets shift on you and you hadn't been planning on that.
So convergence really to me is about taking advantage of the technologies that are coming down the pipe.
And when I go to events like Abundance 360 with Peter Diamandis, I'm one of the few agriculture people in the room.
And I'm always thinking, okay, how are flying cars? How are drones going to affect agriculture? How are we going to take advantage of these technologies? That's, Eric, where my brain goes.
Fortunately and unfortunately, very abstracted away from most people's daily life.
I mean, maybe they go to a farmer's market, but they certainly don't go to the farm.
So it is very important to have people like you thinking about how to bridge that
I ask people, especially in large urban centers, do you buy organic? And they go, oh, yeah, we buy organic.
So where does this convergence take us? What is the what is the sort of summary view that you have of the future of agriculture?
Well, you know, we talk a lot these days in the media about AI and robotics and stuff like that.
It's going to be a long time before we'll see the disintermediation of farmers based on AI and robotics.
And, you know, getting autonomous machines working in the field is not that difficult.
The problem is moving the vehicles between moving the robots between fields, because then you got insurance and regulation and all this kind of stuff.
But there is so much out of the control of an individual on a day to day basis, like I had my garden and I just harvested it the other day before the snow came.
Well, how do you deal with that? And the vagaries of weather and the vagaries of markets, like somebody wakes up in the politically, and all of a sudden the markets shift on you and you hadn't been planning on that.
So convergence really to me is about taking advantage of the technologies that are coming down the pipe.
And when I go to events like Abundance 360 with Peter Diamandis, I'm one of the few agriculture people in the room.
And I'm always thinking, okay, how are flying cars? How are drones going to affect agriculture? How are we going to take advantage of these technologies? That's, Eric, where my brain goes.
Fortunately and unfortunately, very abstracted away from most people's daily life.
I mean, maybe they go to a farmer's market, but they certainly don't go to the farm.
So it is very important to have people like you thinking about how to bridge that
I ask people, especially in large urban centers, do you buy organic? And they go, oh, yeah, we buy organic.
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