The Physical AI Shift That Will Change Farming in Five Years | AgEmerge Podcast 196 with Colin Hurd
Physical AI is about to change farming faster than most people realize, but the Midwest crop cycle puts a hard limit on how fast that change can happen. If you want to understand what the next 5 to 10 years could look like on an average farm, this conversation is the place to start.
Colin Hurd and Monte dig into the real-world implications of physical AI for agriculture, from what’s actually possible on the farm to what adoption looks like when you cannot simply “update” a field overnight. The conversation starts with a big question: what changes first, and what takes much longer than the tech headlines suggest?
If you work in agriculture, robotics, AI, or any industry where technology has to meet the real world, this episode will sharpen how you think about adoption, timing, and what transformation actually looks like in practice. The future of farming is coming—the question is whether you understand the timeline well enough to prepare for it.
Watch the full episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGh_xGNAclA
The next breakthrough in ag tech is a physical AI layer that can learn, adapt, and make farms dramatically more efficient without forcing every grower to become a robotics expert. Colin Hurd returns to the AgEmerge Podcast with a behind-the-scenes look at where ag autonomy really stands now, why retrofit solutions are only part of the story, and what has to change before self-driving machines become truly useful in the field.
From dusty harvest conditions that break today’s sensors to the opportunity for AI systems to preserve hard-earned farming knowledge, this conversation gets into the real bottlenecks - and the real upside - of the next five years.
Colin has devoted his career to leading innovative companies in the machinery industry. In 2016, Colin founded his second company, Smart Ag, which developed the first retrofit driverless system to automate tractors. After funding and growing the company, he led Smart Ag successfully through an exit to Raven Industries (NYSE:RAVN) in 2019. Raven was then acquired by CNH Industrial in 2021 (NYSE:CNHI). Colin stayed with Raven and managed business development until forming Mach in 2022.
Learn about Mach: https://mach.io/about-us/
