How Working the Land (and with Steve Jobs and Michael Dell) Led Tim Bucher to Build a …

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While many tech entrepreneurs dream of retiring as a gentleman (or gentlewoman) farmer, Tim Bucher’s journey took the opposite trajectory. It was only after he bought and started working on his own farm at age 16 that a young Bucher discovered his love for software programming in college. That realization embarked him on a career that would eventually see him working alongside Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, and other Silicon Valley legends.

Yet, despite all his success in tech, Bucher never left the farm behind. In fact, for most of his life, he has straddled the high-tech world of innovation in Silicon Valley and the vineyards of California’s wine country. Now, as the founder and CEO of Agtonomy, Bucher is merging his two lifelong passions—technology and agriculture—to address one of the farming industry’s biggest challenges: labor shortages and operational inefficiencies.

On a recent episode of The Spoon Podcast, Bucher reflected on his early efforts to use innovation to tackle real-world farming challenges. His farm, Trattori Farms, produces grapes and olives—high-value crops that require precise, labor-intensive care. Over the years, he automated irrigation and winemaking processes, but one critical challenge remained: mechanized labor in the fields.

“The gap between rising costs and revenue was closing,” Bucher explained. “I kept automating everything I could, but I couldn’t automate the skilled labor that was needed out in the vineyards and orchards.”

It wasn’t until Bucher watched a documentary about NASA’s Mars rover that he began thinking about how automation could be applied to farming in a way that made sense for both longtime farmers like himself and the manufacturers of the equipment they trust.

“If we can have self-driving vehicles on Mars, why can’t we have them in our orchards and vineyards?” Bucher said. “There’s no traffic on Mars—just like in agriculture.”

This realization led him to found Agtonomy, a company that transforms traditional tractors into autonomous farming machines. But rather than disrupt the farm equipment industry, Agtonomy’s approach is to partner with manufacturers—helping them integrate drive-by-wire and AI technology into their existing models.

“Farmers trust their brands,” Bucher said. “They need the dealer networks, the parts, the service. Buying farm equipment from a startup isn’t realistic. That’s why Agtonomy is helping manufacturers digitally transform, rather than disrupt.”

As AI continues to evolve, Bucher envisions a future where farmers manage their fields remotely—relying on AI agents to analyze data, recommend actions, and deploy autonomous tractors at optimal times.

“Imagine sitting in a command center where AI tells you, ‘Given the soil, weather, and crop conditions, you should send your autonomous tractors out at 9:12 AM on Wednesday,’” he said. “And you just hit ‘Go.’”

While Bucher sees the potential of automated farming, he doesn’t believe technology will replace human farmers—instead, he sees it as a tool to make them more efficient.

“People fear AI taking jobs, but in farming, we don’t have enough labor. This technology doesn’t replace people—it enables them to do more with less.”

For Bucher, Agtonomy was the logical next step, given his lifelong love for both technology and farming. But beyond personal passion, he believes automation is necessary for the survival of modern agriculture.

“Agriculture has to evolve,” he said. “If we don’t automate, we won’t survive.”

You can listen to the full podcast below, or find it on Apple Podcast, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

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