For 17 years, Rob Saik has woken up everyday as the CEO of Agri-Trend, the largest network of independent agricultural consultants in North America. But as of Monday, he's just an employee — and for him, that means he's achieved his dream.

As of this week, Red Deer-based Agri-Trend became part of California-based Trimble, a company that specializes in advanced location-based solutions in agriculture, engineering, and transportation. Saik will now be in global business development for Trimble.

"My job right now is to take that business I conceived, that I basically nutured and grew, and to stretch that concept around the world," he says, "so for me, I couldn't be in a better position."

For the farmers, things could get even better, too.                                  

trimble logo

Michael Helling of business development in Trimble's ag division says this deal will provide crop advisors and Agri-Trend coaches with more resources and support.

"We have things like PurePixel, which is an imagery processing solution. We've got RainWave, which is a precipitation-monitoring solution," Helling says. "Some of those tool sets we'll be able to use and be able to allow Agri-Trend and a lot of their coaches and their network to take and expand."

Saik says farmers' relationships with their coaches won't change, but will be enhanced by the resources Trimble offers.

"From the stand point of a farmer, his relationship with the coaches — you know, that's his relationship," Saik says. "His coach has just gotten stronger, backed by the Trimble organization. And furthermore we can take the model and expand it to other geographical locations, which is for me, pretty exciting."

Trimble says it has no plans to change anything Agri-Trend is currently doing.