Ag robotics has great potential to fundamentally change food production, but startups trying to scale in this space lack access to testing grounds and face many other barriers, says Danny Bernstein, CEO and managing parter of The Reservoir.
Part VC investor, part robotics studio and part startup incubator, The Reservoir aims to help startups tear down these barriers and get on a real path to commercialization.
Bernstein says it “bridges the gap between deeptech R&D and commercial deployment.”
Reservoir Farms opened this year in California’s Central Valley and Salinas Valley, and the team has ambitions to scale it globally.
Bernstein recently spoke to AgFunder as part of the latter’s most recent Global Agrifoodtech Investment report.
AgFunderNews (AFN): Tell us a bit about what The Reservoir does.
Danny Bernstein (DB): The Reservoir is rethinking how agricultural technology reaches the field. We’re an early-stage venture capital investor (Reservoir Ventures), robotics studio (Reservoir Engineering), and startup incubator network (Reservoir Farms) that bridges the gap between deep tech R&D and commercial deployment. We’re ensuring that breakthrough technologies in AI, robotics, and precision agriculture don’t just stay in the lab or on pitch decks—but get tested, validated, and deployed where they’re needed most.
We do this by providing startups from around the globe with real-world testing environments—actual working specialty crop farms adjacent to maker spaces—where they can refine their solutions directly with growers. We call Reservoir Farms the “Olympic Village” of AgTech. We specialize in being a launchpad for pre-seed startups and a landing pad for scale-ups.
Our ecosystem combines hands-on R&D infrastructure, venture capital, and industry partnerships to accelerate the transition from prototype to scale.
Unlike traditional agtech incubators in office parks, The Reservoir focuses on on-farm solutions that address global challenges, including labor shortages, rising input costs, and sustainability imperatives. By de-risking innovation for both startups and the industry, we make it easier for transformative technologies to gain traction in a sector that historically moves slowly on adoption.
AFN: What challenges in ag robotics does The Reservoir address?
DB: Ag robotics has the potential to fundamentally change food production, but startups in this space face enormous barriers to scaling. Many fail—not because they don’t have good technology, but because they lack access to:
- Dedicated testing grounds – Startups often test on commercial farms, which is expensive, logistically difficult, and high-risk for both parties. At The Reservoir, we provide pre-planted, customized farmed acres where companies can iterate rapidly without disrupting a grower’s operations.
- Industry validation – Growers and ag enterprises are inundated with startup pitches but remain skeptical of unproven solutions. Through partnerships, like our exclusive collaboration with Western Growers Association, we provide third-party certification and credibility, helping startups gain the trust needed for adoption.
- Commercialization pathways – The gap between technical feasibility and market readiness is massive in agtech. We help startups refine their go-to-market strategy, navigate industry adoption hurdles, and secure investment, ensuring their innovations make the leap from early-stage prototypes to scaled deployment.
- Workforce integration – Automation should augment the workforce, not replace it. We work on strategies that integrate robotics into farm operations in ways that create new job opportunities and training programs rather than simply displacing workers.
By addressing these challenges head-on, The Reservoir removes the bottlenecks that keep promising ag robotics companies from achieving real impact, which is desperately needed on farms of all sizes today.
AFN: What excites you about the current ag robotics landscape?
DB: We’re witnessing a once-in-a-generation shift in global agriculture. Automation and AI have transformed industries like manufacturing, logistics, and healthcare—but agriculture is one of the last frontiers. That’s changing rapidly.
Consider this: Over 50-70% of high-value crop production costs are labor-related, yet less than 2% of the work is automated, according to Western Growers Association. That’s an enormous inefficiency—and it represents an equally enormous opportunity. Advances in robotics, AI, and automation are finally reaching a point where they can be commercially deployed in ways that meaningfully impact productivity, costs, and sustainability.
What’s exciting is that we’re moving beyond niche pilots and into scaled implementation. Companies like Farm-ng and Robotics Plus are proving that automation can work in real-world agricultural settings. Across global OEMs to startups, we continue to see new investments in AI-driven decision-making, predictive agronomy, and precision agriculture, allowing farmers to optimize resources more effectively than ever before.
But what excites me most? This wave of innovation is about both productivity and resilience. By accelerating the adoption of ag robotics, we’re helping create a food system that is less vulnerable to labor shortages, climate disruption, and supply chain instability. The Reservoir is positioned at the center of this transformation, ensuring that the best technologies get the real-world validation and industry buy-in they need to succeed.
AFN: What keeps you up at night?
DB: There are two big things: speed and inclusion.
Speed: The challenges facing agriculture—labor shortages, climate volatility, rising costs—aren’t theoretical. They’re happening now, and they’re only getting worse. The question is whether we can move fast enough to deploy the right solutions at scale before these pressures become insurmountable. Too many startups with transformative potential fail because they can’t get through the bottlenecks of testing, validation, and adoption quickly enough. We built The Reservoir to remove those roadblocks, but there’s still a race against time in markets like the United States, Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan.
Inclusion: Innovation in agriculture has historically benefited large-scale operations first, often leaving smaller farms and rural workforces behind. If we don’t actively shape this transition, we risk widening economic divides instead of closing them. The Reservoir focuses on technology and workforce development through educational partners like the California Community Colleges. We’re creating pathways for farmworkers to gain new skills and ensuring that automation leads to better jobs, not just fewer jobs. Our goal is for innovation to be a force for opportunity, not displacement.
What keeps me up at night also drives The Reservoir forward: We can help reshape agriculture in a way that makes it more efficient, sustainable, and equitable. But it won’t happen on its own. It requires investment, industry collaboration, and a willingness to challenge the status quo. That’s exactly what we’re doing.
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