Latest / Author Hour / Food 5.0: How We Feed the Future, From Biotech to AI
Transcript
- speaker-0: Robert, pleasure to have you. Why don't you give us a little bit of your backstory, your background, your expertise before we jump into the book? What led you to write a book? speaker-1: Well, the book I wrote, I've written two. this one is Food Five Po, How We Feed the Future. And I come by my roots honestly. Both sets of grandparents were Ukrainian farmer im immigrants, and I'm second generation agriculturalist from the old country. And I wanted to talk about agriculture and technology and where it's headed. And it's you know, food's important to everybody. Everybody is is an opinion. not all of them have the facts and so That's what I wanted to write the book about. speaker-0: Incredible. How what was the transition between had you been literally just farming your your your own farm and then decided that you were frustrated with people sort of misunderstanding? What was the I imagine there was a lot of steps in between there. speaker-1: Yeah, you know, I my I grew up on a family farm, a mixed farming operation with cattle and and cropping and all kinds of livestock. Graduated with a degree and I think I'm starting my thirteenth company, fifteenth company right now in the AI s in the AI sector right now. So I've had a I've had a I think I've had nine careers in the agricultural sector that I counted. I I do have shares in a farming operation in Uganda. north of Kampala towards Gulu and and the Congo. And I've I've traveled the world working with agriculture. Still work with about 20 farms directly. And these are all commercial sized operations. And I've been doing that for 15 years and built one of the North America's largest agriculture consulting firms that I finally this is a 20 year journey. And I sold that in 2018. It was retired for eight days, became CEO of of a robotics company and sold that in twenty months and now I'm building an AI company. Yeah. So farming background, technology, you know, the virus called entrepreneurialism, all that stuff. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, and I imagine there's very few people who can sort of just show up in the agriculture industry knowing what it needs, right? Like these the the lot of incredible technology that might have a huge impact, but unless you have a deep understanding of of the day to day and the constraints and the trade offs and the you know, the challenges of environment and margin and timing that it is very difficult for somebody outside the industry to really solve problems. speaker-1: Well you said at one point to me that you come from a small family farm. speaker-0: Small, small, like yeah, barely barely profitable, let alone commercial. But you know, enough enough empathy to understand how d how difficult it is. speaker-1: And you you you understand You understand the complexities of insects moving in or a disease moving in and you know, right? Those are the realities of agriculture. So that's really what I wanted to touch on and I wanted to, you know, lead us through a discussion around historically where we came from and then where we're going and where we're at today. And so the book Food Five Po, How We Feed the Future, is remarkably on the mark. speaker-0: I think it's exciting to record this now. It's the book's been out for six years, seven years, pretty close. speaker-1: No, no, not that long. So I well, yeah, no, that's right. Yeah. time flies. It's it's true. We we I'm yeah, time flies. we launched the book in August of two thousand and nineteen. And so when you so here's the book. So but in August of two thousand nineteen, and I want you to remember that it was two thousand and nineteen, okay? So the first line of the book is when you woke up this morning, did you worry about a plague? And the second line of the book was, did you worry about war? And the third line of the book is, did you worry about famine? So this was pre COVID, pre Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and pre famine that happens because you have geo geopolitical instability. So the book is remarkably accurate in terms of where my thinking was at at the time and kind of not in a lot of ways because I predicted Two out of the three things and I think we'll see all three transpire, actually. speaker-0: Yeah, d tragically. It is it's I give you a lot of credit. It's very difficult to put down, you know, hard predictions about the near future in writing because people, you know, can pick it up and test you very soon. And, you know, seven years is enough to start really being in the thick of have these predictions come true. Are they headed in the right direction? And from what I understand, you you really hit the ball out of the park on a number of these predictions. Th that's your second book, right? So the the first book was the Agriculture Manifesto. Then you've got Food Five Po. T Tell me about sort of the the first book and that initial author transition. Like just give me the speaker-1: So the first book I would call a booklet. I just wanted to get my thoughts down. And so the Agriculture Manifesto, 2014, 10 Key Drivers That Will Shape Ag in the next decade. So net then you can go back and see how accurate I was in terms of the 10 key drivers. I I really wanted to spend, and I did, the beginning of the book really discussing three letters, GMO and biotechnology, which I spent a good chunk of the book on. And then I then I went all the way through the bioengineering and the segmentation and sensor 3D printing and ultimately artificial intelligence in the 2014 book. Again, predicting where agriculture was gonna be by 2024. Again, fairly accurate about where where agriculture ended up. And then Food Five Po was really, and we're gonna talk about writing a book here, Eric. So my my avatar or my target audience. for the book was a 30-year-old single mom living in the city with a couple kids, trying to feed her family, trying to understand what was going on with food and should she feel guilty about buying food. And so I wanted to paint a picture of where agriculture came from and where we are today. So I I took us through the genesis of agriculture through the era of muscle, through the era of machine through the era of chemistry, through the era of biotechnology. And then the last half of the book kind of deals with where we're at today, which is convergence. And that includes the convergence of remote sensing technology, satellites, biotech, and of course AI. And so that's what I wanted to do is give give somebody a context of where we came from and where we're going and how we're dealing with agriculture given the the technologies and the constraints that we're dealing with in agriculture today. speaker-0: So where does this convergence take us? What is the what is the sort of summary view that you have of the future of bag? speaker-1: Well, you know, it's it's we we talk a lot these days in the media about r AI and robotics and stuff like that. It's gonna be a long time before we'll see the disinter in disintermediation of farmers based on AI and robotics. Now, that's not to say I I was CEO of a robotics company and you know, getting autonomous machines working in the field is not that difficult. I mean, we can do it. The problem is moving the vehicles between moving the robots between fields. Because then you you got insurance and regulation and all this kind of stuff. So the barriers to autonomy at farm level are not that high. I think we can get through a lot of them, but there is so much out of the control of an individual on a day-to-day basis. Like I had, you know, my garden and I I I just harvested it the other day before the snow came. We had snow already. And You know, it got hit with hail. So right across the road, my farmer buddy just got his crop hammered with hail. Well, how do you deal with that? And and the vagaries of of weather and the vagaries of markets. Like somebody wakes up in the morning and says something 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 Diamondis, 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. speaker-0: Yeah, I love that. And I imagine it's far from most people's first idea. You know, the the the way that our food is produced is 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 I speaker-1: I love to have these conversations with people about food. I asked people, especially in large urban centers, do you buy organic? And they go, yeah, we buy organic. I said, Why? And they go, it's healthier for you. I said, Okay, why? Well, because they don't use chemicals, they don't use pesticides. I said, Well, how do organic farmers control insects and disease on their crop? And then their faces just go blank. Because if it was just as easy as putting an organic sign at the end of the field, so this field is organic, all bugs and diseases, please stay away. Well, that'd be easy. But the fact is that it doesn't happen that way. And organic farmers, just like conventional farmers, end up using pesticides to control insects and diseases. They just happen to be organic pesticides. And they're not quite as effective and you have to put on more, but that's the way, you know, the spin is. And so I like to I like to try to I I used to preach a lot, Eric. And what I what I like to do now is ask questions like I just did. Do you buy organic? Why is it safer? Why is it safer? And then you you dig back and you scrape the paint and you find out that very few people actually have a really good understanding of the practicalities, the pragmatism of agriculture. speaker-0: Yeah. So how how did your goal change between the first book and the second book? They they both sort of strike me as like a little bit predictive and a little bit, you know, the the agriculture manifesto. And then for Food Five Po you said your avatar, your target reader was was this sort of urban, you know, mom, just to educate her about what's going on in this world that's so far away from her own. W w tell me about like that process. is that a result of conversations that you had, of people that you meet? Like how does this speaker-1: actually began with my own family with one of my daughters because the daughter was not allowing her my granddaughter to eat some stuff and I go, what's that all about? And so I'm going, Well that's whack. So so I wanted to write a you know I wanted to write a book that that talked directly to my thirty year old daughter with my granddaughters and and so that that's one of the one of the impetuses. But i you know again it's It's an important thing and it's and you've got policies that are designed in urban centers that affect the rural community. And much of these policies, like I don't know if you watch Clarkson Farms and on Netflix, but it's a fantastic show. And Jeremy Clarkson just pointed out that this last year he left 200 acres unplanted because he could not pencil out a profit on wheat or barley in in the UK. And this is because of policies that are generated by people in London that have never stepped foot on a farm. And I think it's important to have these pragmatic discussions about agriculture. So that's, you know, that's kind of why I wrote the book and that's why I got another one in my head. speaker-0: Yeah. Well, I love Clarkson's Farm. I think it's one of the greatest shows. It's it's just perfect like funny and heart and relaxing and beautiful. Like the scenery of the show is incredible. And it is it you know, there's a there's a pill in the peanut butter that's like very interesting for people that are really far away from agriculture. And even if you're close to it, it's just yeah, it's wonderful. If you're speaker-1: If you're a farm if you're a farm background person, you just freaking burst out laughing or something. Thanks. You know. Yeah. It's it's really, really enjoyable. I really encourage people to watch it. It's fun. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, yeah. Strong endorse. So t so tell me about this third book that's that's rattling around in your head. You're right around schedule. You've been every five years so far. Yeah. speaker-1: I guess hey, I never thought about that. But it's I think I I you know I I think it's gonna be about the interface between technology, especially artificial intelligence and and the blue-collar sectors of agriculture and heavy equipment. I add the last part, heavy equipment, because there's so much going on today with the with GPS guidance and sensor technology inside of tractors, combines, etc. And it's not only About agriculture, but it's also today, this morning, I started out having a discussion about the rental business in the Netherlands and and the heavy equipment sector over there. So I I think that we're going to see a fairly large influence of technology on the equipment and the agricultural sectors, but I I don't think it'll be as disintermediated as a lot of other sectors. In fact, if you look at a graphics about the impact of AI on specific industries like grounds maintenance, like construction, like agriculture. They are in terms of job displacement quite low when you compare it to administration, accounting, legal, finance, et cetera. FinTech is going to get hit hard. But you know, agriculture, I I I'm kind of excited actually. I I think that ag could actually make Really good use of some of these tools. speaker-0: Yeah. It it does feel like the the physical world is sort of overdue. You know, the last thirty years have been primarily, you know, software and computing innovation. And now that is kind of making its leap into robotics and autonomy and you know the physical intelligence of materials. speaker-1: Yeah, that that crossover material science and artificial intelligence into physical being, physical bots, robots, that's gonna be an interesting thing to watch. I think that's gonna be amazing in the next five to ten years. In fact, we just built a we I built a house and and we we put a station in for a robot in the house. speaker-0: cool. Very cool. Yeah. Yeah. What is the what is is that related to the AI company that you are working on now? speaker-1: Yeah, the company that I have is well that the the the company is T one, named after the brand that my dad had on the farm. And T one Technology Corporation has built a technology called VisorPro dot AI. And Visor Pro is a solution for the aftermarket. Think the service and maintenance side of equipment dealerships. And so we're operating in Canada, the United States, and Australia, and I'm looking to branch out into the EU right now. So it's a it's a start up, a lot of money going out and slowly we're we're getting to the point where we'll cash flow and that'll be good. speaker-0: Very cool. Tell me about what you hoped would happen once you got these these books out into the world and and some of the effects that you felt. What are the doors that opened? What unexpected good things have happened? speaker-1: Well, f first of all, the the book I even I was working with a scribe. She was out of Italy. She's one of your people and and she was actually on an organic olive farm. So we had these wonderful and when when when I the process of of the book was I I talked it, I walked it into existence. So I would, you know, have a phone on and I'd be talking to her and I say I want to do a ch we'd do a chapter on this and and she would, you know, basically record everything and I literally walk the book into existence because I'm a I'm a I'm a talker rather than a writer like a at the computer. But we I remember she she said, that's quite a rant. And so we carved out these components called Rob's rants in the book. And and and and here's one short one. I'm always amused when I come across ideologically driven people professing That we should somehow go back in time to a simpler agriculture where you were one with the land and you worked with the soil with your bare hands. I know two things. That kind of agriculture will not feed a 2050 population. And I know for sure they have never ha harvested half an acre of potatoes by hand. So it has so the the again, the the the the idea of of getting your thoughts out. And what happened as a result of that is the book actually became both books actually came became best of Amazon books. And I've always been a keynote speaker and the books really propelled me around the world. So I I ended up giving keynote speeches in Portugal and Lisbon and Madrid, Florida, Australia, so South America. So yeah, it it It allowed me to have a platform, even still today. In the next two months, I have a number of keynote speeches. Again, the book has been pretty good in terms of its relevance even today. So it's it's taken me and it's created I I've had a lot of TV interviews and and and and publication, a lot of podcasts just like this. People want to know. And so you put yourself out there as an expert and You know, you take you take some heat from the haters, but at the at the same time I I tell people you don't believe me, do your own research work, you know. So yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. It's it's really remarkable, you know, a if seven years in that this is still sort of paying dividends. I mean, it's it's an incredibly well reviewed book. You got I'm looking at it right now, four point three stars on a hundred and fifty six review. That's a lot of reviews and a high star rating for that review count. How do you how do you use the book in your in your keynotes? Are you like do you bring do you gift copies? Do they go in gift bags? Do you does the event buy them for people? How does that part work? speaker-1: Yeah, I'm discussing a two day event in February and with a a company that wants to change how they're relating to their farm customers. They want to elevate the discussion beyond just the sale of products to a higher level of thinking. So they're gonna bring me in for two days of workshops. Company's gonna buy a copy of the book for all the attendees, which will be cool. So that's that's great. I I didn't count on, you know, the book necessarily being a lucrative venture on its own. It has been okay. And I still get some checks every month from Amazon, but you're not gonna, you know, you're not gonna buy a lot of Starbucks with it. But the the thing it's done is is the posture, what it's done for my positioning has been good. speaker-0: Yeah. And when you include, you know, the speaking and the invitations and the workshops and things like that. It's yeah, you gotta you gotta have a broad definition of ROI is what I generally tell tell authors. What what about some of the you know, the qualitative impact that you hope to have? Like do you feel like you've reached your your target reader? Have you you know, has your daughter read it? Yeah. speaker-1: My kids my kids all read it. I think that's one of the areas that I probably missed in the equation and and maybe need to concentrate a little bit more on. I didn't probably well again, I I've got lots of things on the go in my life, and but one of the things that would have been good to leverage more back in the day was search engine optimization. Today is probably AI engine optimization. That all being said, the book. actually positioned me as a significant expert in agriculture. And I've appeared twice now to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Agriculture Policy Committee as a witness. So I've appeared twice to the House of Commons to help formulate national policy. Probably something that had to do with the book, you know? speaker-0: Fantastic. Love it. And I love the, you know, the walking it into existence. Like I feel like a lot of people picture writing a book as like desk drudgery. And, you know, your point of, you know, if you get a scribe, you got a creative partner, you got somebody's recording and taking notes and helping you formulate these ideas. You know, you just pop in some AirPods and go for a walk and have somebody ask you questions and you you riff. You have the conversation you've had 10,000 times in your life. You know the book is in your head. You just need somebody to sort of sit there with a catcher's mit and catch it as it comes out. speaker-1: Yeah, and and and to be able to reframe what I just said into kind of different verbiage so that it resonates more. It's easy for a technocrat, for anybody in any given field to get too technical, which is again why the the persona that I'm writing for is so important. You want to write for that thirty year old single mom with a couple kids, and you know, that was I I kept that in mind the whole time. speaker-0: Yeah. What what has been your biggest moment of celebration about the book throughout maybe through the creative process or maybe with it being out in the world? What was like the peak moment for you? speaker-1: Well, we have in the agricultural sphere, we have all kinds of events and I was on the committee of an event in Olds, Alberta called Ag Smart and they rented a significant theater and so the theater was full and when I launched the book I launched it actually in front of my audience, the hood. And so we had, you know, three hundred people in in the audience and I was able to sign the book and it was that was a pretty cool day. You know, we had we had our politicians out there and stuff like that. It was neat. Yeah. speaker-0: Very cool. Yeah. It's it's funny how often that that moment is a physical gathering, right? Even if it's a small one, even if it's a coffee shop book launch or book launch or something. But you know, hundreds of people in in a theater that are like your crew, that's a really that's a really cool, like makes it tangible, especially when you, you know, you've spent years working on this thing and it captures decades of experience. Like it's a good culminating moment. speaker-1: It is, yeah. speaker-0: This is probably going back a little bit now, but do you recall how you found and decided to use Scribe? speaker-1: Well, belong to a program called Strategic Coach. Every ninety days I review my life. And I've been doing that for thirty going in my thirty-third year, back when my hair was your my hair was your color. So I've been going yeah, so I've only missed I think I've only missed one or two sessions in thirty-three years. So every ninety days I review my life. And I believe there was somebody at Strategic Coach talking about we We have lots of discussions at Strategic Coach about entrepreneurs writing books. And there is so much wealth of knowledge inside the heads of entrepreneurs. I mean, yeah, my book is about Food 5.0, but there's so much about management and about in you know, about wisdom that you've learned over the years, how many times you've proverbially stepped on a rake and you go, I'm not gonna do that again. And you know, there's there's so many opportunities for entrepreneurs. And I'm sure it was at a strategic coach session where I heard about Scribe and and that's where I I reached out and yeah, engaged you guys. speaker-0: one of the two founders, Tucker Max, was was quite close with Dan Sullivan and was speaker-1: You speaker-0: coaches and stuff. So that would that would definitely do it. speaker-1: Yeah, it would have been Tucker. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah, thirty three years for you. That's a r that's a real run. I don't know how old strategic coach is, but I can't imagine it's, you know, fifty. speaker-1: Yeah, no, he I mean, I would have been early in and I I think he's been coaching for thirty six, thirty-seven years. So I was pretty Dan Sullivan says I'm the perfect candidate, a slow learner with money. So he he likes he likes slow learners. But you know, it's been good, you know, from a standpoint of that whole ability to think about your thinking is something that a lot of people don't do. And I'm forced to do it every quarter. I think about my thinking. And so, you know, the book is a part of that, for sure. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Being able to to zoom out and and I know assume that part of that process is sort of figuring out what are all the things you want to achieve or do in your life and trying to get the puzzle pieces in the right order, figure out which one makes others easier and and a book is, you know, a lot of times we say it's a force multiplier on everything else that you're doing. So speaker-1: Yeah, you're charging me up right now, even as we're talking, 'cause I you know, I gotta get at this next book, but the conversation just charging me up again. It's good. speaker-0: Good. Yeah. I mean, especially when when all you gotta do is go for a walk and you know, go for i and rant. It's and a book is the pro outcome. Rob's speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that'll be your your final book. Is it is it's just a compilation of all the all the rants from all the books. speaker-1: I'm sure it'll have an audience of about three. Yeah. Okay. speaker-0: Yeah. But those are three very important people and you know, those those ripples go a long way. Okay, Rob, if you had somebody who was in your shoes maybe ten years ago, a little more now actually, they were sort of flirting with writing a book, it's somewhere on their list, but they haven't really made the the full commitment to make it a project that they have decided to dedicate themselves to. What do you say to those people? What do you recommend? speaker-1: Well, I I don't think my path was all that wrong. I mean, I I started out with the Agriculture Manifesto. You can see it's a booklet. It's just it's just a booklet. It's it's what is it? Fifty, sixty pages long. I mean eighty pages. Start out with that. Start out with a booklet and and just get some stuff down and get comfortable. Okay. But when I moved to the Food Five Po, I mean the Food Five Point O is a f a full full page regular size book. And it it It was the first one actually, the booklet was fairly well received. People liked it, and that gave me the confidence to move on to the next level. So I, you know, a journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step, and it's just take that first step and decide you're gonna do it. I I think that we live in a in a time right now where the AI technology can take your ideas. and expand upon them. But I I think we need to be super cautious because people aren't paying money to get AI's ideas. they're getting money. They they they want to hear genuine human content. So I think, you know, as much as you want to fall back on allowing AI to do the writing, I think You might lose a lot of your tone and your personality in that. And so I'm thinking, Eric, very hard about that right now. How much do you allow AI to take your ideas and run with them? And then you've got to be careful of how many other people's ideas are going to come into that. So I I like to think that as I'm working on the next book, it would be an original work, probably augmented by. Better fact checking than maybe I've done before because of course I have access to it. So I I I think that there's a there's a picture that was painted by Leonardo da Vinci of God and Adam. Do you remember that? And they were touching touching fingers? Not speaker-0: Not quite. speaker-1: quite, not quite, right? And at the last strategic coach session, it says in a world where intelligence is abundant. The differentiator will be imagination. And so if you think about those those if you think about intelligence and imagination, spark happens in between. The spark happens in between. And I think that's where the human being and the imagination can exist. And I think that's a tremendous opportunity for people who have imagination to get that down into the format where other people can gather it. Like a book. Yeah. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And believe deeply in that sort of giving back to the the human conversation, like capturing everything that you've worked so hard to learn in your life and giving it back, putting it down, capturing it, even though you don't necessarily know immediately who's gonna use it. You just never know who you're gonna reach and how you're gonna reach them over, you know, the fullness of time. We're still reading books that are hundreds and thousands of years old. So I speaker-1: reading I'm I'm going to Poland in about ten days and I'm reading the book Poland by James Mitchner for the second time. It's you know written back in the eighties and it's fascinating because it yeah that the history and the it it is such a cool way to get yourself grounded in the country you're gonna go visit, you know and speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. Love it. Where would you send people to follow along, read the books, stay tuned if you got, I don't know, a newsletter, any of your speeches coming up? speaker-1: You know, I I I I suppose LinkedIn is the best place for Robert Psych. I've got a website, RobertSyke.com, and that most of my entrepreneurial activities are at RobertSyke.com. I used to be quite active on X, not so much, and and yeah, I I think that's kind of it right now. I don't have the bandwidth to just really do a lot more. I have thought about setting up my own I've I've set up my own medium and my own scribe channel, but Really the website, RobertSike dot com. And then the books are available on Amazon. So the Agriculture Manifesto and Food Five Po, How We Feed the Future on our Amazon. So speaker-0: Yeah. Amazing. Thank you so much. We'll link all that below for listeners to to link up with you. And I hope to run into you at a an abundance event or something and, you know, learn more about this. I'll have to dial up some of your your podcasts or your your audio book and download more. This has been fascinating. I wish we had much more time. speaker-1: Well, it's been good. I always enjoyed talking about the creative process and that's what that's what this discussion has been about and it's good. It's a good thing to talk about. speaker-0: Thank you. Thank you so much, Robert, for doing what you do and for writing books about it and for being here with us today. Appreciate you. speaker-1: Thanks for your time, Eric.