Ag Tech Talk Podcast: The Practical Path to Farm Automation, with Burro’s Charlie Andersen
10 September 2026 In this episode of Ag Tech Talk by AgriBusiness Global, Charlie Andersen, CEO of Burro, discusses the practical realities of AI and automation on the farm — what works, what doesn’t, and where the biggest opportunities lie. Drawing on experience deploying more than 800 autonomous systems worldwide, Anderson explains why growers should start with simple, repetitive tasks before tackling more complex jobs, how automation can build trust with farm labor rather than fear, and what separates robotics companies built for real-world scale from those that only shine in flashy demos.
Podcast Transcript:
*This is an edited and partial transcript.
AgriBusiness Global: You mentioned growers shouldn’t start by automating everything, but instead focus on repetitive, smaller jobs. What are some good entry points for automation?
Charlie Andersen: Robots will likely harvest fruit autonomously someday, but not in the next five years. So, start with the easiest jobs you can insert a robot into — and that’s movement. Small vehicles, tractors, utility vehicles, towing — those are great to automate. Let people handle picking or other high-value work on each end of a process and automate the movement in between. That saves fuel, labor, and wasted transit time.
Mowing and spraying are the same story. If you’re still doing those with a person in 2026 or 2030, you’re spending money for no reason — and exposing that person to chemicals they shouldn’t be near.
We’re in the first inning of a long game. A lot of operations will be heavily automated a decade from now, but it starts with movement. Master that, and you can move on to hauling, spraying, towing, controlling — all before tackling harder tasks like autonomous harvesting.
ABG: How can growers introduce automation in a way that builds trust with their workforce, rather than fear of job loss?
CA: I’ll answer this personally. My dad died last year at 66. His nickname growing up was “Corn” — he started growing sweet corn at 12 and did a lot of spraying. My grandmother had a Ph.D. in organic chemistry, so he used the newest chemistry of the ’70s on an open-station tractor. It paid his way through Princeton, but he later developed Parkinson’s and Lewy body dementia, likely from exposure to chemicals like paraquat and 2,4-D.
I don’t think people should have to do that kind of work. Most ag labor doesn’t want to sit on an open-station tractor spraying chemicals — that’s not work people actually want. Autonomy can remove people from tasks they’d rather not do in the first place.
There’s also a dystopian view of automation from science fiction — Terminator, The Matrix — but we’re far from that. Robots are still slow and make plenty of mistakes; replacing a person entirely isn’t realistic right now.
To me, robots are time machines. They double or triple what you can do in a day. Laborers who pay piece rate often make more money by being more productive, and they’re learning a new skill set in the process. In our experience, adoption doesn’t come from the top down — it’s the line workers actually using the equipment who become the biggest advocates because their pay improves, their work environment improves, and they learn more by doing it.
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