The AI Report Podcast podcast

How Rare Scaled an AI Agent From 200 to 16,000 Users | Brett Jenks, CEO, Rare

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In this episode, recorded at Dreamforce 2026, Brett Jenks, CEO of Rare, joins Liam to talk about what it takes to change human behavior at scale, and how Rare is using AI to do it. Brett's path to conservation ran through political reporting in New Jersey, film production in Boston and a volunteer teaching post in rural Costa Rica. He has spent more than two decades leading Rare, a conservation nonprofit that now works in 60 countries. Brett explains how Rare built Agent Tierra, an AI agent on WhatsApp that gives smallholder farmers in Colombia guidance on soil, weather and regenerative farming practices. Before launching the agent, Rare spent time building trust with 200 early adopter farmers, taking composting among local farmers from 6% to 94% within a year. Agent Tierra now reaches 16,000 farmers in Colombia, with Brazil and Honduras next. They also get into why farmers change when they see other farmers change, how Rare's pilot plots cut input costs by 30% and raised yields by 30%, why culture shapes every rollout, what keeps a global nonprofit CEO up at night, and why humans need to start thinking on hundred-year timelines. Key Topics Covered How Brett went from political reporter to film producer to conservationist Rare's 50-year mission to inspire change so people and nature thrive How Rare built Agent Tierra, an AI agent for farmers on WhatsApp Why trust comes before technology in behavior change Scaling from 200 farmers to 16,000 in Colombia The economics: 30% lower input costs and 30% higher yields in pilot plots Why people are both incredibly complex and very much primates Adapting AI programs across cultures and countries Why long-term thinking is the key to resilience Episode Timestamps 00:00 - Brett's four careers and the through line 01:39 - The writing on the wall and the move to Costa Rica 02:26 - How Brett found conservation 04:02 - Rare's mission and the science of behavior change 06:09 - What Agent Tierra is and how Rare built trust first 09:21 - Bringing an AI agent to farmers on WhatsApp 10:27 - Why farmers change when they see other farmers change 12:01 - Are humans complex or simple? 13:25 - The real incentive: lower costs and higher yields 16:13 - How farmers use Agent Tierra day to day 17:51 - Navigating culture across 60 countries 19:44 - What keeps a nonprofit CEO up at night 21:44 - Why humans struggle to plan for the long term 23:05 - Do people naturally lean toward good? 24:21 - One message for everyone on the planet Where to find Brett: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-jenks-9200196/ Rare - https://rare.org/ Learn more about Agent Tierra - https://www.salesforce.com/customer-stories/rare/agentic-farmer-coaching/ Partner Links Join The AI Report Pro: https://community.theaireport.ai/checkout/the-ai-report-pro Join our Claude Founding Cohort: http://theaireport.ai/claude-founding-cohort Join our free live Claude session, every Tuesday: http://theaireport.ai/free-claude-session Subscribe to our free newsletter: https://newsletter.theaireport.ai/subscribe Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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